ROAD
June 2014 BCBusiness 63
T
he small meeting room cramped with stacks of
cardboard file boxes and an empty bookshelf
seems a fitting place for two of the three part-
ners in the new firm Michael, Evrensel and
Pawar
LLP to discuss their plans for the future.
"Eventually we'll have a nice boardroom,"
says Marshall Pawar. "But we don't need a
$100,000 oak table that a client will never see."
Ryan Patryluk and Marshall Pawar, with
entertainment lawyer Arthur Evrensel, founded the
firm, which operates as
MEP Business Counsel, in mid-
March. It is one of two firms that have sprung up from
the Vancouver office of former powerhouse Heenan
Blaikie
LLP, which dissolved on February 5 to the sur-
prise of many.
MEP will focus on corporate practice,
while Gall Legge Grant & Munroe
LLP—with high-profile
counsel including former Attorney General Geoff Plant,
former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Michel Basta-
rache and sports giant and Harvard Law grad Brian
Burke—will focus on litigation, labour and public law.
When Heenan Blaikie dissolved in
early February, it was the largest failure of
a law firm in Canadian history. But for two
Vancouver firms that have risen from its
ashes, failure–and learning the hard
lessons from it–may be paving the way
to a sustainable future
fro m
RUIN
by M a rc i e G o o d
p h o t o g r a p hy b y a da M B l a s B e r G
t h e
p62-p66_Law_june.indd 63 2014-05-01 2:10 PM
