Allen & Overy is closing down its sole office in Canada after just a year.

The impact on the Toronto real estate market won't be huge, since the only staff are a partner, an associate and a PA, and the firm never even moved out of a serviced office. However it means that the firm's Canadian adventure has ended with a whimper, after high hopes in 2011 when the firm sent over fact-finders to investigate the possibility of a launch. The board quashed that proposal in favour of Australia, with suggestions that it had decided that the Seven Sisters, Canada's equivalent of the Magic Circle, had the top of the market sewn up.

Four years later, A&O opened its micro outpost in Toronto, ostensibly to keep hold of a partner, Francois Duquette. Duquette, a Quebecois, had previously planted the flag for A&O around the world, helping set up offices in Abu Dhabi and Casablanca, but wanted to move closer to home.

    Seven Sisters managing partners hear the news 

Before it opened, A&O told RollOnFriday that the Toronto office would not be competing with local firms and would continue to refer domestic Canadian work to its local network. Duquette told The Lawyer, “The purpose is to seed the network”, and take advantage of "low hanging fruit".

Instead, Duquette is moving in-house, A&O's tiny launch has concluded with a tiny departure and it will revert to its former method of managing Canadian client relationships, on a fly-in-fly-out basis. A spokesman said, "We would like to thank Francois for the contribution he has made during his time at Allen & Overy and wish him all the best for the future".
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Comments

Anonymous 10 October 15 01:16

Perhaps a quibble, but Seven Sisters isn't a Canada-wide expression. It refers to the top seven firms with offices in Toronto. I practise in Vancouver, where many of the said firms have offices, and I'd never heard that expression. (Mind you, I work for government and lead a sheltered life as a criminal lawyer.) Still, Toronto does regard itself as the centre of the Canadian universe...