Macdonald is a senior litigation and administrative law lawyer with more than 20 years of practice experience. His more than 20 years of practice have taught him that lawyers have a simple function: resolving clients’ problems. Clients used to get comfort hiring a fifty-partner law firm. Now clients see through comfort. They want a lawyer to resolve their problems quickly, or tell them how to reso
lve their problems themselves. At MLG the mainstays for practicing law are good judgment, robust communication, and advanced technology. Good judgment drives efficient dispute resolution. How many disputes really involve numerous complicated legal issues? Many times, there is only one key issue. The art of litigation is framing the necessary facts through that one key issue. Resolutions often have nothing to do with a legal issue. Resolutions can happen because a lawyer is quick to grasp a client’s real interests and negotiate a favourable outcome. The art of negotiation is communicating about your client’s interests as though they were reasonable, even foregone conclusions. MLG reduces costs through robust communication. Most important lawyers’ work happens on the phone: commitment is measured, arguments get tested, court time is reduced. Technology has “flattened” the world, and should do the same to legal expenses. MLG uses software that maximizes client-lawyer collaboration. Our document management software searches voluminous data to identify the “needles in the haystack.”
MLG was founded on the notion that the future of the law is minimalism: one lawyer will replace five; the best lawyers will reduce court time to zero. The way toward this future is understanding that the greatest victory is avoiding a dispute before it arises.
