“If you’re a transactional lawyer with a pulse and you’re halfway decent, you’ll get a job offer or six,” says one associate with a national firm who accepted an offer in the U.S. at the start of the summer and whose salary soared from less than $150,000 to US$240,000, not including a signing bonus and a pandemic bonus. “I really should not be making this much money at this stage in my life. It’s kind of crazy.
In some cases, American firms have offered to let new recruits keep working from their homes in Canada indefinitely, a sign of how “aggressive” the American recruiting campaign is, Ms. Kirkland says. “If you’re a third-year associate making $150,000, and you can ship off your Canadian laptop and get an American one and double your money, for a lot of people that’s a no-brainer,” she says.
While Canadian firms contend with the recruitment push from south of the border, the surge in domestic deal making means law offices are trying to boost their own ranks at the same time, often by poaching associates from smaller Canadian firms. “We hire the best and have market-leading training, so it’s not surprising that on occasion our associates will look to opportunities in places like New York, London and Silicon Valley,” he says. “We’re also fortunate they rarely leave to cross the street to go to our competitors.
As with lawyers, the red-hot pace of IPOs and M&A deals has led to a bonanza of job opportunities and pay raises for junior investment bankers and analysts on both sides of the border. “We’re seeing quite a large number of offers being given to Canadian junior bankers to go south of the border, either imminently or as things loosen up,” says Bill Vlaad, CEO of the Toronto-based financial services recruitment firm Vlaad and Co. “Once the proverbial border really opens up, we expect this fall there’ll be a large number of cross-border hires.”