Bay Street Toronto Firms Ranking

[Coolcucumberlaw]

Is there a ranking of the Bay Street firms in terms of reputation?
 

I’m particularly interested in how Blakes, Cassels, Miller Thomson, McMillan, and Stikeman Elliott, and Bennet Jones are ranked in relation to each other? 

[KOMODO]

No. Law Firms as creatures are not ranked by reputation. Their individual lawyers may be recognized by various places for their reputation in a field, their departments may even be ranked by these organizations for excellence in a specific area (though these rankings are flawed and not always consistent, etc.), but the firms are just collections of their lawyers and departments, some of which will be stronger than others within every place.

Also, when you're asking about reputation, ask yourself - reputation for what? A partner who has an excellent reputation for top level work may be terrible to work for. A department that has a reputation for being a great and fulfilling place to work may not have clients who are able to pay top dollar. 

Try to figure out what kind of practice you'd like to have, and then meet with people at various firms who do that thing. You will quickly develop your own ranking system based on likability, the type of work and experience you are looking for, etc. Then go work at the place ranked highest on your own personal list that offers you a job.

[Jaggers]

Those firms are all top tier in certain areas, but I wouldn't hire any of them to do my employment law.

[QueensDenning]

1 hour ago, Jaggers said:

Those firms are all top tier in certain areas, but I wouldn't hire any of them to do my employment law.

Which firms would you hire to do your employment law? 

[helloall]

You can use Chambers to get a sense of firm tiers in specific practice areas by Province. But note that Chambers Canada is unfortunately less reliable for boutiques for some reason. 

Edited October 21, 2022 by helloall

[123]

3 hours ago, KOMODO said:

Try to figure out what kind of practice you'd like to have, and then meet with people at various firms who do that thing. You will quickly develop your own ranking system based on likability, the type of work and experience you are looking for, etc. Then go work at the place ranked highest on your own personal list that offers you a job.

I knew a bunch of classmates who really emphasized going to full-service firms, where they'd get a variety of work through their rotations. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's fine to defer a decision, because you feel you need information that you'll get through work. But I also think that can reasoning can end up being a sort of procrastination. I did get the sense from some students that they were trying to avoid doing any of the reflection and decision-making @KOMODO suggests. And, while I have no idea of OP's specific motives for asking the question, I think that's part of the allure of working for one of the "best" firms: if you go to a firm that's better than every other firm, you can't make the wrong choice, right? The problem is that as Komodo is pointing out, terms like best and reputation aren't universally reliable metrics. And even if rankings are objective, it's usually better to have narrowed down goals and career objective beyond "work at most reputable firm" so that you can look for things that align with your interests, needs, and preferences.

Edited October 21, 2022 by realpseudonym

[mistertubby]

which firms have the best lay prestige

[LMP]

32 minutes ago, mistertubby said:

which firms have the best lay prestige

Whichever has the best bus advertisements and commericals. 

[KOMODO]

44 minutes ago, mistertubby said:

which firms have the best lay prestige

There is no way to accurately answer this. We don't have a poll of all of the people in the world asking them whether they think Stikemans or Blakes is more prestigious, and even if we did, it would be totally meaningless. The vast majority of lay people don't know the names of any of these law firms. The vast majority of people who do know a few of them might have had one impressive experience with one lawyer at a given firm and so they'll tell you "that's the best firm", when industry peers might say that firm actually sucks at XYZ. Even if you only poll lawyers working at large Toronto firms, they won't be able to decide amongst themselves which firms are the most prestigious, because as I mentioned above, it totally depends on the lawyers in those firms and their specific practice areas / departments.

Anecdotally, I find that most of my peers who used to ask these questions about prestige and which firms are the "best" have left Bay Street entirely. Once they arrived at whatever firm they thought was so great, they realized that it was a crappy place to work or otherwise not what they expected. I say "most" because a few of them left to go to major US firms, because it's more likely that lay people have heard of them, so if that's all you care about, go there.

[Mbu1]

1 hour ago, realpseudonym said:

And even if rankings are objective, it's usually better to have narrowed down goals and career objective beyond "work at most reputable firm" so that you can look for things that align with your interests, needs, and preferences.

The problem is that the same could be said for just about everything, including law school choice. That said, there is no denying that some law schools offer "more" or perhaps even "better" career choices. In the same way that many people choose biglaw to build up their CVs and leave after a few years for greener pastures. So it is not irrational to aim for the highest ranked law firm(s), if possible. How many people have ended up not achieving their "narrowed down goals and career objective" by starting with the top-ranked big law firms? 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Mbu1

[KOMODO]

You win, three people have now asked for the list of the highest ranked law firms! That was the secret thing you needed to do for the senior lawyers on this site to release the information, we were just hiding it from you. Here you go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Canada-based_law_firms_by_revenue

As you can see, the answer is Gowlings. It made the most money, so it is the best.

 

....unless you care more about revenue per lawyer? then clearly Osler is the best. Yes, yes, Osler is the best one.

....unless you don't think 2017 is the only year that matters? Oops, the data only comes from that year and changes over time....

....also there are only seven firms on the list, hopefully that doesn't matter? You don't mind that most Bay Street firms aren't on the list, right?

 

There is no such thing as a widely accepted list of law firm rankings. The more you ask for one, the more you're showing that you have no idea how this works and no ability to synthesize the information that is actually available.

Edited October 21, 2022 by KOMODO
a typo

[Garfield]

also, a lot of big firms do marketing that really works on students. They also have relationships with law schools, which have an incentive to push Bay Street firms. be careful about getting too caught up on these things.

[Coolcucumberlaw]

Thank you! This was all really informative.

[reaperlaw]

6 hours ago, helloall said:

You can use Chambers to get a sense of firm tiers in specific practice areas by Province. But note that Chambers Canada is unfortunately less reliable for boutiques for some reason. 

I don't know, for the practice areas I interact with, Chambers is mostly accurate in my mind for boutiques. I'd also lump in Legal 500 with Chambers (but not Best Lawyers). The only caveat to that I'd say is certain name-brand firms, like those your average student would think is prestigious, are sometimes a tier above where they realistically should be. 

Which you might blame on prestige outweighing substance, but I think that's partially because those firms are also better at getting their clients to respond to the questionnaires from Chambers and the like, and because big firms spend more time putting their lawyers out there in professional development situations (conferences, OBA/CBA, etc.), which helps with the peer evaluations. 

Edited October 21, 2022 by reaperlaw

[Jaggers]

Chambers is a pretty good start. It does identify the firms with strengths in specific areas fairly accurately. It doesn't really capture the whole landscape, but it's a good rough overview.

[Psychometronic]

If OP and co. are really asking about which firm will give them the most bragging rights amongst their law school peers, than the answer is any of the above. However, I've heard horror stories about every single one of these firms.

[JohnsonWest]

who fucking cares

[Dood]

This is like ranking the best car insurance companies. 

[Coolcucumberlaw]

7 hours ago, JohnsonWest said:

who fucking cares

Clearly you do since you took the energy to respond. 

[JohnsonWest]

9 hours ago, Coolcucumberlaw said:

Clearly you do since you took the energy to respond. 

Lol. Good luck to you. Hopefully you get the 'prestigious' job you're desperate for to fill that void in you. 

[Garfield]

2 hours ago, JohnsonWest said:

Lol. Good luck to you. Hopefully you get the 'prestigious' job you're desperate for to fill that void in you. 

Calm the fuck down. Cucumber took everything pretty well after comments were made. Many of us were all law students once who knew nothing, got sucked into the dick measuring contest that law school invariably becomes and then blindly had Big Law as the dream until one or more of recruit rejection/soul crushing hours/verbal abuse by senior level partners/etc

[CleanHands]

8 minutes ago, Garfield said:

Calm the fuck down. Cucumber took everything pretty well after comments were made. Many of us were all law students once who knew nothing, got sucked into the dick measuring contest that law school invariably becomes and then blindly had Big Law as the dream until one or more of recruit rejection/soul crushing hours/verbal abuse by senior level partners/etc

All the more reason these sorts of questions deserve a derisive rather than sugarcoated response.

[JohnsonWest]

4 hours ago, Garfield said:

Calm the fuck down. Cucumber took everything pretty well after comments were made. Many of us were all law students once who knew nothing, got sucked into the dick measuring contest that law school invariably becomes and then blindly had Big Law as the dream until one or more of recruit rejection/soul crushing hours/verbal abuse by senior level partners/etc

Oh I'm calm Gar; maybe try taking your own advice. If you didn't notice, Cuke was a bit sassy with his response so I returned same. The fact is that prestige and "firm ranking" matter fuck all and it's time we take an active approach at making that clear. Students place their entire identities on this sort of shit so it needs to be called out. 

[Coolcucumberlaw]

8 hours ago, JohnsonWest said:

Oh I'm calm Gar; maybe try taking your own advice. If you didn't notice, Cuke was a bit sassy with his response so I returned same. The fact is that prestige and "firm ranking" matter fuck all and it's time we take an active approach at making that clear. Students place their entire identities on this sort of shit so it needs to be called out. 

I was asking because I’ve heard a lot of students talking about these firms as if there is a ranking. I was curious as to if one actually exists or not because I did not understand how my classmates came to their conclusions. 
 

Not everyone is searching for prestige. I think it’s disgusting that you would make such an assumption considering how little I said. I was honestly just curious due to what my classmates were saying. 

[QueensDenning]

55 minutes ago, Coolcucumberlaw said:

I was asking because I’ve heard a lot of students talking about these firms as if there is a ranking. I was curious as to if one actually exists or not because I did not understand how my classmates came to their conclusions. 
 

Not everyone is searching for prestige. I think it’s disgusting that you would make such an assumption considering how little I said. I was honestly just curious due to what my classmates were saying. 

Now you know - and theres nothing "disgusting" about making that assumption when you basically ask for a list of the most prestigious firms, so chill a bit.