Dentons Offers global reach, local focus
A SPECIAL CALGARY HERALD SERIES ON CALGARY’S BUSINESS VISIONARIES SPONSORED BY CALGARY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
It’s all about being accessible. We want to be there for all of our clients — large, medium or small.”
No business is too big, or too small.
For Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, every Calgary business is a potential client.
“We’re local lawyers with global reach,” says lawyer Nicole Bacsalmasi, an associate with Dentons in Calgary.
“That’s our business model,” adds lawyer George Tai, a principal at the firm’s city office. “I think that says a lot about what we’re trying to do.”
With more than 8,000 lawyers in 158 offices around the world, Dentons is a leading full-service firm with a focus on business law.
Indeed, its large international presence gives it unparalleled ability to help Calgary firms with global ambitions.
But its unique corporate structure also allows it to be responsive to the highly specialized needs of local clients.
“It’s what we call a polycentric firm,” says Tai. “What that means is as a global law firm, we have no single headquarters or dominant legal culture.”
This makes Dentons as diverse as the geographies it serves — Calgary included.
“We think a successful law firm has to be rooted in the recognition of the importance of being a part of a local community,” Tai says.
“Even though we’re as big as we are, with the global reach that we have, we understand that it’s our relationships with local clients and our connections with the communities in which we operate that drive our success.”
With about 100 lawyers, Dentons has one of the larger presences among law firms in the city, and it is the largest in Edmonton. This is in addition to its offices in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
“So we have a big Alberta presence,” Bacsalmasi says.
Its client list includes a who’s who of large businesses in Calgary, many that are involved in energy, agribusiness, technology and renewable energy. But Dentons serves small businesses, too. In fact, its lawyers actively cultivate relationships with small, innovative enterprises.
“We take an entrepreneurial approach with those smaller companies, where we feel like we’re entrepreneurs alongside them,” Bacsalmasi says.
Because Dentons offers its associates the freedom to be innovative and entrepreneurial themselves, they are able to provide services that are scaled to the needs of smaller companies.
“It’s all about being accessible,” she says. “We want to be there for all of our clients — large, medium or small.”
Whether it’s helping the world’s largest energy firms broker ground-breaking deals or providing critical advice to up-and-coming companies in agritech and technology, Dentons has both local know-how and the international presence to help clients flourish at home, across Canada and around the world.