Our stage is an intensive 6 month program, usually beginning in either January or February or May or June after the successful completion of your bar admission exams.  You also have the opportunity to work at the firm during the previous summers or pursue other interests and passions.  Our program is designed for stagiaires with a deep desire to succeed, insatiable curiosity and strong all-round abilities.  You will work hard, immediately joining our practice area teams and contributing to the success of client transactions and cases.  You will work in a collegial environment, where colleagues will become friends and mentors.  You will have a high level of responsibility and an unparalleled working experience. You will learn about the law, how to manage your workload and have a number of opportunities to meet and interact with clients.

Davies is a business law firm, practising in a dynamic and broad field of law.  We focus on areas where our firm excels and our lawyers are the leaders in their field.  We use a multi-disciplinary approach to transactions and cases, building a team based on the needs of our clients and the file.  As a stagiaire, you will become an active participant.

Unlike most other law firms, we offer an early partnership structure.  For example, Montréal associates are considered for partnership as early as three years after joining the firm. In fact, 80% of our lawyers are partners at the firm.   Our firm structure is non-hierarchical and promotes teamwork and the sharing of work throughout the firm.  We believe that clients belong to the firm, not a particular lawyer.  We also believe that targets for billable hours are not in the best interests of our clients or our lawyers and so we do not set targets for our lawyers, stagiaires or students.  Together, these beliefs foster an environment and philosophy whereby the work is given to the team that can best execute the transaction or handle the case and results in increased opportunities for you to get involved at an early stage.

Top of Page

The program has been developed to give you an introduction to the firm and the practice of law.  Throughout the year, our lawyers will present “show and tell” seminars about various practice areas. For more information about our Professional Development program, click here.

Top of Page

To ensure you have the opportunity to get to know our firm and our lawyers and pursue your interests and objectives, we do not have rotations.  You can focus on the practice areas that interest you, though we encourage you to try your hand at different things.

Top of Page

The best way to learn about the law is to practice.  During your stage, you will work as a member of our team, alongside our most senior lawyers.  We have an open door policy at Davies and you are able to accept and request work from any lawyer in the firm.  This approach lets you manage your own workload in the same way our lawyers do.  It also gives you access to a wide variety of talented lawyers to work out problems, discuss ideas and learn from their experiences.

Top of Page

Our practice is to hire students who we think have the potential to become exceptional stagiaires, associates and, eventually, partners of the firm.  In addition, we have no hiring quotas, but make offers to all stagiaires who meet our standards.  As a result, our hire-back percentage is generally very high.  For example, from 1998-2005, there were only two years were we did not hire back all of our stagiaires. There is no B team at Davies – it is the exceptional talent of our lawyers that allows us to continue to attract leading clients and innovative and interesting work, and we believe that hiring back all stagiaires who meet our high standards is a critical component of our success. 

Top of Page

You will be able to choose any lawyer in the firm as your mentor a few weeks after you begin your first summer at Davies.  Your mentor will help you become integrated into the firm and will give you guidance, feedback and support throughout your summers and stage.  Mentors serve as a general resource for advice on practice management, client management and people management.  They will also deal with any questions or needs that you have regarding your workload, a file you are working on, or the firm. 

In addition to the formal mentorship program, informal mentoring is an ingrained part of firm culture at every level.  A student back for her second summer will help a new student find the right firm resource, a young lawyer will help a stagiaire draft his first motion, or a senior partner will toss around ideas with a younger lawyer as they work together to develop a solution to a unique problem – it’s all mentoring and it happens every day.

Top of Page

Feedback is both a formal and informal process at Davies.  We encourage our lawyers to give informal feedback during and after each mandate.  You will also have a more formal evaluation at the end of each summer and mid-way through the stage, with a member of the stage committee and your mentor.  The feedback will be based on interviews with each of the lawyers you have worked with and will highlight your strengths and areas for improvement.  These assessment meetings are an open exchange of views to ensure that both you and the firm are doing everything possible to advance your development. 

Feedback works both ways at Davies because we believe we can only improve if our students and stagiaires tell us where we are succeeding and where we need to improve.  We therefore have formal and informal sessions to get your views on areas like recruiting, the student program, the stage and our professional development program.

Top of Page

Throughout the year, there are a number of opportunities for the students, stagiaires and lawyers to socialize at both formal and impromptu events.   We have regular informal lunches in our “lawyer’s lounge”, Friday cocktails during the summer, and many of our partners host dinners for small groups of students, stagiaires and lawyers each summer.  There’s the annual firm-wide party in December, the softball team, and in recent summers we’ve organized activities for students, stagiaires and lawyers like paintball, go-karting and white-water rafting.  While these events are a great way to socialize and to get to know each other, attendance is optional as we also appreciate your need to spend time away from the firm and pursue your own interests.

Top of Page

Our lawyers, stagiaires and students are actively involved in various community service and pro-bono efforts.  They participate in or organize events and sit on boards and committees both individually and through the firm.  We support a variety of educational, medical, cultural and community-centered causes and organizations. We have an active Centraide campaign, and we support a number of charities such as the Montréal Children’s Hospital through their Pedal for Kids event, Generations Foundation, Project Chances, Dans la rue, Ste-Justine Hospital.  We also support our lawyers who want to teach, write papers and speak at legal and business conferences.  These activities both enrich our personal experiences practising law and help us make a contribution to the community.