It was a rare case of legal minds coming to the same conclusion that led to today's announcement that five Canadian law firms will merge to become the country's second-largest provider of legal services.
In 1998, four of the firms -- Montreal's McMaster Gervais, Toronto's Borden & Elliot, Calgary's Howard Mackie and Vancouver's Ladner Downs -- separately started tinkering with the idea of transforming themselves into national law firms.
After about 18 months of informal discussions among the various firms, "familiarization" meetings in each other's offices, clandestine dinners and code names (such as Project Stetson) to keep the deal quiet, the five -- including Ottawa's Scott & Aylen -- are merging to become Borden Ladner Gervais LLP with 590 lawyers and patent agents.
"I don't know if anybody approached anybody else. It's something that just evolved," said Norm Saibil, managing partner of the freshly minted Borden Ladner's Montreal office.
Borden & Elliot weighed its options for becoming a "legal powerhouse." It could become part of a multinational firm or go it alone. It opted for the latter, but rejected the idea of setting up its own "greenfields sites," or new offices, across the country.
Instead, the firm decided to go with the depth and strength of existing players who have deep roots in the regions and existing client lists, explained John Warren, the managing partner of Borden Ladner's Toronto office.
It looked for profitable, successful firms that weren't takeover targets.
"If you put a bunch of success stories together, how can you lose?" said Sean Weir, the new firm's national managing partner, based in Toronto.
It was a strategy that each firm eventually settled on during the year and a half this deal took to complete. But while there were rumours in the legal community of an impending deal, the fact that these particular players decided to merge was not a total surprise. Three of the firms already had a decade-long relationship.
Borden & Elliot and Howard Mackie had worked together on the 1988 Amoco Canada Petroleum Co. Ltd. takeover of debt-heavy Dome Petroleum Ltd.
In 1990, those two firms, along with Montreal's McMaster Gervais -- then Mackenzie Gervais -- and Vancouver-based Russell & DuMoulin established a national association of law firms.
The informal association allowed the firms to refer work and serve clients on a national and international basis, but each firm continued to operate independently.
But last spring, Russell & DuMoulin dropped out of the arrangement and by December it had joined with Fasken Martineau to become what was then Canada's second-largest law firm with close to 500 lawyers.
With their cross-town rival out of the picture, Ladner Downs spotted an opportunity to go national with Borden & Elliot.
Prior to this, "we weren't talking to these folks at all because they [Borden & Elliot]were in an association and they were sort of out of play," said Ken Bagshaw, the new firm's managing partner in Vancouver.
Borden & Elliot also saw a chance to seize on an opportunity on the West Coast.
"They're the best damn business law firm in Vancouver. We needed a Vancouver presence to service our clients," Mr. Weir said.
Ladner, which had considered expanding to Calgary to build a bigger western base before heading into Toronto, referred to the negotiations as "Project Stetson."
"I wanted everybody to think we were only dealing with Calgary," Mr. Bagshaw said.
In Calgary, Howard Mackie's managing partner Doug Mitchell referred to his firm's bid to go national and strengthen ties with the other members of the informal national association as "Project 99."