Clients benefit daily from Field Law's framework of a client service culture and dedication to successfully running the firm as a competitive, continuously improving business while pursuing legal excellence and serving our communities. We consistently demonstrate that meeting the needs of our clients is our first priority through the delivery of sound advice, great service and solid results.
Our regional size, structure and deep roots allow us to provide added value services. We are a large enough regional presence to be able to closely monitor regional issues and challenges affecting our clients and still entrepreneurial and nimble enough to be able to effect change quickly and cost effectively.
Alternative Fee Arrangements: Field Law has experience with a broad range of alternative fee arrangements, [MORE] including providing legal services on a fixed fee basis for project work, fixed fees for larger portfolios of work, contingency fee arrangements, blended hourly rate and contingency fee arrangements, and blended hourly rate and performance based holdbacks. We have identified the need to be proactive in providing you alternatives to the hourly rate billing model, as large consumers of legal services strive to develop fee arrangements that emphasis value delivered rather than time spent.
We are flexible in structuring our billing arrangements and are aware that in many cases you want more budget certainty than the hourly billing model provides. For example, we have found that coverage opinions are well-suited to a flat fee billing arrangement. In the litigation context we have experience "unbundling" the process into its components (Statement of Defence, document discovery, oral discovery, interlocutory matters, trial, etc.) and providing flat fees for our services related to the individual components. We have also structured billing arrangements for litigation matters where flat fees are combined with performance-based holdbacks that result in a specific focus on value delivered. In addition, we have significant experience in prosecuting subrogated claims on the basis of both traditional contingency fee arrangements and more complex contingency and performance-based structures that take into account achieving pre-arranged milestones.
For business law clients, Field Law offers a variety of services at a fixed price. These services include incorporation and an extensive range of corporate administrative actions. For commercial house builders, we offer conveyance services at a fixed price. A variety of transactional services are offered at special or blended rates.
Client Learning: As our client, you have access to exclusive opportunities to learn such as seminars, in-house presentations, industry-specific client roundtable sessions, Lunch and Learn sessions, e-bulletins, newsletters and articles. Many of our lawyers have written authoritative textbooks in particular areas of law and/or have annotated other publications that we also share with you.
Extranet: You can have direct access to your files and electronic documents through customized, secure extranet sites.
Conflict Checks: Multi-layered conflict checking is conducted for all new file openings.
Leveraged Resourcing: Paralegals, librarians and assistants are part of the Field Law team who provide technical proficiency and support to your business and ensure that the right work is being done by the right person.
Precedents Management: Precedents, arranged by practice area and forms are collected and organized within our document management system for easy re-use of work product. Lawyers across the firm can easily share tasks and collaborate for the most efficient production of the best work product by the right people.
Legal Research Database: Field Law has invested in a fully searchable work product database. [MORE] Our substantial archived collection of research work from is available to all our searchers and includes keyword tagging in addition to advanced full text searching capabilities. We also subscribe to a full complement of external legal research sources.
Litigation Document/File Management System: Field Law currently uses Worldox as its main document management system, [MORE] and Summation iBlaze and LAW PreDiscovery as its main litigation document management software. These programs allow us to describe, number, classify, and manipulate both scanned documents and native files for efficient production and exchange of records. The use of scanned copies of material and/or exact digital copies of native files allows original documents to be preserved intact, and the software gives us the capability to search native files and OCR, to redact privileged or confidential material, and to create electronic "packages" in various formats that can be provided to you, opposing counsel, co-counsel, and experts with minimal time expenditure and without any printing or photocopy costs to you.
Business law clients benefit from the use of “blacklining” programs and metadata removal services offered by the WorkShare software, deployed throughout the firm.
Law Librarians & Research Lawyer: The Field library team, with over 30 years' experience and led by a Director of Knowledge Management and Libraries, [MORE] offers personal research assistance and hands on training to Field Law people. Because we offer so many tools for both print and electronic legal research, we also offer regular training and refreshers on these products.
Our Firm also employs a dedicated research lawyer and has a very high number of junior lawyers and students who have done legal research and clerking at most levels of Court.
The Director of Knowledge Management and Libraries role is to lead the continued development of systems which enhance our lawyers’ abilities to easily access relevant information and documents.
Professional Development/Training: Our commitment to education and training is such a high priority that we created the position of Director of Professional Recruitment and Development. [MORE] Responsible for coordinating the delivery of our various continuing legal education and professional development initiatives, our Director is constantly looking for ways to build upon and expand our existing programs. Our goal is to ensure that all of our lawyers can access the resources they need in order to become outstanding legal advisors to our clients. Highlights of our current programs include:
• Education Committees that organize internal and invitational seminars on a wide variety of topics related to substantive law and practice management
• Support for external continuing legal education through several recognized organizations, including the Legal Education Society of Alberta, the Canadian Bar Association, and the Alberta Civil Trial Lawyers Association
• Supporting partners who would like to work on their L.L.M. degrees
• Regular Practice Group meetings, with an emphasis on legal developments in specific areas of law
• A mentorship program for all associate lawyers to support their training and development on an individualized basis, and
• A comprehensive and well-structured articling program with formal rotations in both litigation and corporate law.
Additionally a large numbers of our lawyers engage in law school teaching which allows us to give back to our legal academic communities and keeps us on the cutting edge of developments in various areas.
Cutting Edge Technology: You benefit from our investment in and streamlining of technology. [MORE] All information is stored in a centralized data centre with disaster recovery redundancies in place, drastically reducing the cost and volume of hardware, maintenance, support, downtime, and operating costs.
We are one of the first law firms to run a virtualized desktop environment across all offices. Not only have we been able to reduce costs, increase productivity, and improve data security, but we are also able to be more proactive with the implementation of new technologies. The virtual desktops we use can be accessed from almost any computer, tablet or smart phone, making our lawyers and staff connected anywhere, anytime. And, with our email-integrated Internet-enabled phone system, we can be more responsive in our service delivery and competitive in our pricing.
Referral Network: Field Law is a member of State Capital Group, [MORE] allowing you access, (through us) to trusted, dependable legal representation anywhere in the world your business takes you. State Capital Group is a seamless global network of over 145 of the profession’s preeminent independent law firms with more than 11,500 attorneys in nearly 450 offices around the world. By uniting our skills, expertise and influence, member firms help leading and growing companies in every industry navigate a complex and ever-changing legal landscape to help you solve today’s toughest business challenges.
