Legal evolution

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This article was published 24/12/2022 (1241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two smallish law firms with long legacies in Winnipeg and recently retired or soon-to-retire veteran lawyers are merging.

BD Oakes Jardine Kaneski UnRuh LLP (formerly Booth Dennehy) and Deeley Fabbri Sellen — which operated across the road from each other — are merging and rebranding with a cohort of young associates to form DFS Kaneski UnRuh LLP.

Brent Kaneski and Andrea Dodgson at Deeley Fabbri Sellen said both firms were looking to refresh and hire and train younger lawyers.

“My thought was that we could go out and hire some new associates but by going this route we are gaining two partners and four associates (from BD Oakes) in one go who have developed practices and who seem to work well together and we seem to work well with them,” said Dodgson.

For his part, Kaneski said that the merger is sort of a natural evolution for BD Oakes.

The history of his firm was such that it had a core group of lawyers that had been at the firm for some time who were all in their 70s and in one case (the recently retired Roland Rivalin) another who just turned 90.

“We made a conscious decision when we took the firm over in January 2019 that we wanted to grow from the bottom up,” Kaneski said. “We wanted to get a little younger. We wanted to recruit from law schools or hire younger lawyers and train them ourselves.”

The three eponymous partners from Deeley Fabbri Sellen — Richard Deeley, Robert Fabbri and David Sellen — will all be retired by mid-2023. At BD Oakes, Mike Dennehy recently retired and Raymond Oakes passed away not long after he, Kaneski and Kerry UnRuh took over the firm in 2019 and Janet Jardine has moved to another law office.

While the two firms’ offices are directly across the road from each other at Broadway and Edmonton Street, the driving force for the merger came from Kerry UnRuh who was formerly the managing partner at Deeley Fabbri Sellen and will now be returning there.

“We all really enjoy Kerry,” Dodgson said. “He’s a good lawyer and a good friend and we know what his people are like. We just think it is a good fit.”

UnRuh gives the merged firm a criminal law practice, something Deeley Fabbri Sellen hasn’t had since UnRuh left the first time. It will now effectively be able to provide a wider range of legal services including criminal, family law (Dodgson’s specialty), estate and real estate, corporate law — pretty much everything except immigration and tax law.

With talent recruitment a crucial element in every business these days, it’s no different for the legal profession. Dodgson said the younger associates from both firms are already discovering connections among the two groups and the merger will inject some renewed excitement.

“It is unusual to have the three founding fathers practising that long at the same firm,” Dodgson said referring to her retiring colleagues who had been working together since the ’70s. “The older guard is leaving and we have a good mix between the two with the young associates to continue building a firm.”

With close to 20 lawyers after the merger, which will be in effect Jan. 1, the new firm does not have any pretensions to rival the TDS, Fillmore and MLT Aikins firms of the city, but it will be able to hold its own as a medium-sized firm.

“When you walk into law offices and see the marble and glass and cherry wood, you know there is a certain price tag that comes with that,” Kaneski said. “We are trying to position ourselves to be more competitive from a price standpoint. We can offer the full breadth of legal services while still maintaining a small-firm feel. That is our mantra.”

In another time, real-estate space considerations might play a role in a merger like this. But with plenty of downtown office vacancies, it’s not really an issue for DFS Kaneski UnRuh LLP.

DB Oakes will vacate its single-occupancy building (with one year left on its lease) at the northwest corner of Broadway and Edmonton and move in to Deeley Fabbri Sellen’s ninth floor offices across the street at 386 Broadway, which has empty offices as a result of its former veteran partners’ retirements.

Dodgson said the thinking is the newly merged firm will not need more space for now, and that future space considerations can be dealt with at a later date.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca