McCarthy Tétrault

McCarthy Tétrault LLP is a Canadian law firm specializing in business law, litigation services, tax law, real property law, labour and employment law, with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montréal, Québec City, London (UK), as well as New York City.^[1] McCarthy Tétrault LLP is one of the Seven Sisters law firms.^{[2][unreliable source?]}

McCarthy Tétrault LLP

Headquarters	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
No. of offices	7
Date founded	1855
Company type	Limited liability partnership
Website	mccarthy.ca

McCarthy Tétrault is the only law firm listed in the Report on Business Top 25 Best B2B Brands by The Globe and Mail in 2021,^[3] and it has the second strongest law firm brand in Canada according to Thomson Reuters’ Regional Law Firm Brand Indexes 2021.^[4][5][6]

The firm represents Canadian and international clients, including major public institutions, financial services organizations, mining companies, manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and other corporations.

McCarthy Tétrault's London office specializes in assisting clients with their transatlantic transactions, and is staffed with both English and Canadian-qualified lawyers.^[7] A charter member of the Canada-UK Chamber of Commerce,^[8] it provides services in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

History

The firm had its origin in the formation of Boulton & McCarthy in 1855 in Barrie, Ontario, by D'Arcy Boulton (1785-1846), Auditor-General of Upper Canada and grandson of prominent Family Compact figure George D'Arcy Boulton, and D'Alton McCarthy Sr (1806–73), a Irish lawyer immigrated to Upper Canada. McCarthy's son D'Alton Jr. articled at the firm in 1858.

In 1869, the McCarthy father and son ended their partnership with Boulton and established their own firm.

In the 1870s, D'Alton McCarthy Jr. became active in electoral politics. A key protégé of Sir John A MacDonald, he entered parliament in a byelection in 1876. He also secured most of his party’s legal business in Ontario, a lucrative business as cases involving controverted elections allowed the parties to continue their battles through petitions, counter-petitions, appeals, voidances, and by-elections (himself having successfully challenged his own defeat in 1874, only to lose the subsequent byelection), quickly established himself as the party’s leading counsel on elections.^[9] The year he was elected, he also opened an office in Toronto, and in the following year renamed the firm McCarthy, Hoskin, Plumb, and Creelman,^[9][10] adding names of younger partners John Hoskins (1836-1921, later Treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada 1916 to 1921), Thomas Plumb and Adam Rutherford Creelman (later General Counsel to the Canadian Pacific Railway, for many years a key source of revenue for the firm).

In 1882, the firm was renamed McCarthy, Osler, Hoskin & Creelman when crown prosecutor Britton Bath Osler joined the partnership in 1882 to secure the lucrative legal business of the Canadian North-West Land Company, the real estate arm of the Canadian Pacific Railway.^[11] In the years that follow, McCarthy as a firm was in the thick of the debate over language divide that gripped the nation's political discourse. Osler was retained by the federal crown as one of the prosecutors that secured the hanging of Louis Riel, while McCarthy emerged as a leading voice of the anti-French, anti-Catholic, pro-English-rights movement, eventually leaving the Conservative Party after MacDonald's death. McCarthy and Osler died in 1898 and 1901 respectively.

In 1902, the firm was renamed to McCarthy, Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt. Frederick Harcourt (who was a partner by the time Osler joined the firm in 1882) joined the firm as a law-student and assisted John Hoskins for work relating to Hoskin's role as the Official Guardian of Infants of Ontario, a public appointment that was a predecessor of the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee. Harcourt's name was added to the firm's name when he succeeded Hoskins as the Official Guardian of Infants.^[12]

In 1916, the firm was split into two. D'Alton McCarthy Jr's son D'Alton Lally McCarthy (1870–1963), and two nephews Leighton McCarthy (1869-1952) and Frank McCarthy (1883-1963) formed McCarthy & McCarthy, while the second generation Oslers and many of its corporate partners formed Osler Hoskin & Harcourt.

In 1990, McCarthy Tétrault was created through the merger McCarthy & McCarthy of Toronto, Clarkson Tétrault of Montreal, Shrum Liddle & Hebenton of Vancouver, and Black & Company of Calgary.^[13] This merger was initially denied by the Law Society of Alberta, which enacted rules designed to stop it. The rules prohibited members from entering into a partnership with anyone who was not a resident of Alberta, and prohibited members from being partners of more than one firm. This rule was challenged as being contrary to the mobility rights protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In the resulting court case, Black v. Law Society of Alberta,^[14] the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the rules. The subsequent merger made McCarthy Tétrault Canada's first national law firm.^[15]

Notable alumni

• D'Alton McCarthy Jr. (1836–98), Member of Parliament for Cardwell 1876-78, for Simcoe North 1878-98, one of the co-founded of McCarthy, Hoskin, Plumb, and Creelman (Toronto) 1877
• Leighton McCarthy (1869-1952), nephew of D'Alton, succeeded him as Member of Parliament for Simcoe North 1898-1908, founder of McCarthy and McCarthy in 1916, President of Canada Life Assurance Company 1928-40, the first Ambassador of Canada to the United States (appointed envoy in 1941, the position was raised from envoy to ambassador during his term in 1943)
• D'Alton Lally McCarthy (1870–1963), Treasurer of the Law Society 1939-44
• Britton Bath Osler (1839-1901), the eldest of the three prominent Osler brother, joined the firm in 1882 as the second named partner.
• Wallace Nesbitt (1858-1930), Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada 1903-05
• Salter Hayden (1896-1987), Senator for Toronto, Ontario 1940-83
• John J. Robinette (1906–96), Treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada 1958-62
• Ian Binnie (b. 1939), Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada 1998-2011
• Daniel Johnson Jr. (b.1944), Premier of Quebec 1994, MNA for Vaudreuil 1981-98
• Hubert Lacroix (b.1955), President of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 2008-18
• John Manley (b. 1950), Deputy Prime Minister 2002-03, federal minister 1993-2003 (Finance 2002-03, Foreign Affairs 2000-02. Industry 1993-2000, Member of Parliament for Ottawa South 1988-2003)
• Wayne G. Wouters (b. 1951), Clerk of the Privy Council 2009-19
• Jean Charest (b. 1958), Premier of Quebec 2003-12, Deputy Prime Minister 1993, MP for Sherbrooke 1984-98, MNA for Sherbrooke 1998-2012
• Marc-André Blanchard (b. 1965), formerly chairman of the firm, Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations 2016-20, Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister since 2025