Montreal law firm Langlois Lawyers LLP has announced the launch of L-inc Project, a legal services program for innovative, growing start-ups.
The new program provides a wide range of legal services required when a business is starting up and during its first years, particularly dealing with incorporation, shareholder and employee agreements, and service agreements and commercial leases.
Besides “advantageous” fixed fees, the L-inc. Project provides businesses with access to mentoring services offered by well-established executives from among the firm’s clientele. The L-inc. Project strategic team is composed of lawyers from the firm’s business, technology, intellectual property, labour and litigation law groups.
“We know that each business has its own specific, distinct needs,” said Jean-François Gagnon, Langlois lawyers’ chief executive officer. “That is why we decided to create the L-inc. Project and make our business experience, legal expertise and network available to innovative businesses. We want to be an important partner in the growth of Quebec businesses.”
This effort appears to address a common complaint by clients against law firms. A global research study by Deloitte concluded that conventional law firms are no longer meeting today’s business needs. The majority (55 per cent) of participants in the study – legal counsel, CEOs and CFOs — have taken or are considering a significant review of their legal suppliers.
Some law firms like Langlois and McCarthy Tétrault have seen the writing on the wall. “Our business is actually to make it as easy possible for clients to solve things in the most practical efficient way for them, and that’s why I get excited about the role that law firms can play because we should be best positioned to be the problem solver, this reaggregator of all these different pieces and solutions so that what the client sees at the end of the day is this simple integrated solution to the different problems that they have,” said Matthew Peters, the national innovation leader at McCarthy Tétrault.