With a national bench strength encompassing virtually every corner of the Canadian industry, the team at Miller Thomson is nimble, accountable and committed.
This is a leading, full-service legal firm with the requisite national and local knowledge across agriculture, construction, e-commerce, education, financial services, First Nations, forestry, global trade, insurance, manufacturing, mining and technology.
And perhaps most importantly, these are legal experts who think like clients and possess an unwavering view towards results.
“We are focused on thinking like a customer,” says Vancouver Office Managing Partner Daniel Kiselbach. “If you can make your clients feel comfortable with you, and you’re providing the right advice in a timely way, that’ll go a long way to maintaining and building customer relationships.”
The firm’s reach extends across 525 lawyers working in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec. The Vancouver office is composed of numerous partners and headed up by Kiselbach, a 30-year legal veteran who has appeared at all Canadian court levels.
And Kiselbach’s team is as varied as the cultural mosaic found not just in Vancouver, but across Canada.
Mike Walker – Real Estate. Walker helps clients conceive and implement innovative solutions to their challenges in land use, development and property management.
“Legal advice is useless if it’s only accessible to lawyers,” Walker says. “Rather than inviting a client into ‘lawyer world,’ I think my job is to use my expertise to illuminate things in the real world that the client lives and works in.”
Sarah Hansen – Environmental and Indigenous Law. Working in general commercial litigation, Hansen has represented individuals, government, industry and First Nations in a wide variety of commercial disputes.
“An emerging area in my field are Indigenous claims related to climate change litigation,” Hansen says. “We are closely watching the provincial government’s action plan for the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. On a federal level, reconciliation remains a hot topic.”
Maryam Zargar – Corporate. A leader in the Corporate Group in the Vancouver office of Miller Thomson, Zargar’s practice covers a broad range of corporate and transactional matters, including mergers and acquisitions, venture capital financings, corporate finance and corporate governance.
“I pride myself in being a trusted advisor,” Zargar says. “I will take my client’s calls and treat them as gifts. They don’t have to call me. I work to earn that trust and maintain it with each interaction.”
Darcy Wray – Corporate. As a trusted advisor to entrepreneurs, Wray offers sound business counsel in the areas of corporate structuring, corporate reorganizations and corporate governance.
“The key is to start with the big picture with my clients,” Wray says. “Rarely are the issues so complicated that if you just focus on first principles and the key issues, that you cannot keep it relatively simple. I then take each of these concepts and break them down to the core pieces.”
Dwight Dee – Private Client Services. Dee works with individuals and families in the areas of estate and incapacity planning, trusts, business succession planning and elder law matters.
“From the moment that I first communicate or meet with a client, I want them to know that I am someone who is genuinely interested in their story and their family’s story,” Dee says.
John Doolan – Aboriginal / Real Estate. A senior commercial real estate lawyer, Doolan possesses a wide variety of experience in aboriginal business law and commercial real estate matters.
“There is a lot happening in aboriginal business across Canada and B.C. First Nations are leading the way in many areas,” Doolan says. “There are more and more major projects being undertaken where First Nations are taking leading roles and innovative approaches to business, development and governance matters and entering into significant government-to-government agreements.”
Veronica Rossos – Labour and employment. With a practice focus on labour and employment, Rossos also has extensive experience in commercial litigation across Canada.
“Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be the top trend in law these days and validly so,” Rossos says. “How we, and our clients, can use AI to streamline the delivery of legal services is an exciting topic that will have an impact on all areas of the law.”
With an institutional knowledge stretching back seven decades, think of the Miller Thomson advantage as one of equal parts experience and foresight.
“We are business lawyers and part of our responsibilities is to spot the trends that are out there not only from a legal standpoint, but from a business and industry standpoint,” Kiselbach says. “And that’s one of the major advantages that we have.”
