Dale Orlando (left) and Patrick Brown. (Paul Lawrence for The Lawyers Weekly) Click here to see full sized version.

Will the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association (OTLA) be renamed McLeish Orlando LLP? Probably not. However, given the pivotal role this plucky personal injury law firm in Toronto has played in founding and running Canada’s largest association for plaintiff-side trial lawyers, the name change might be appropriate.

In the past 15 years, three partners from the eight-lawyer firm have been elected president. Most recently, Dale Orlando was elected vice-president of the association for 2008-2009, which places him on track to assume the presidency. He will automatically become the president-elect and then the president one year after the term of the current president, Patrick Brown, his partner at McLeish Orlando LLP, ends next summer.

Another name-partner from the firm, John McLeish, was instrumental in founding the association in 1991 and served as its second president from 1993-1995.

In an interview with The Lawyers Weekly, Orlando and Brown discussed their involvement with OTLA and their plans for the future of the 1,190 member-strong organization.

Brown has been with the OTLA since its birth 17 years ago. He can still recall working the phones trying to persuade plaintiff counsel to join the newly formed association. He credits the OTLA with helping him hone his skills as a personal injury trial lawyer.

“I owe a lot to OTLA in developing my legal education and my ability to practise in the area that I do,” Brown attests.

Brown, 43, comes from a large Catholic family with five children, which enjoyed active debates around the dinner table. His mother thought that he should either become a priest or practise law. Brown, who has two daughters aged 6 and 8, says, “the priesthood didn’t fit in with my lifestyle.”

Over the past decade, Brown practised exclusively personal injury law. Notable clients and cases include: the family of the late Dugland Christie, a B.C. lawyer who was killed in 2006 while cycling across Canada to raise awareness for access to justice; Olympic equestrian Cindy Ishoy, who was injured in a car accident; and on a pro bono basis, Tamara Carter, an 11-year old girl who was shot in the head while riding a City of Toronto bus.

Next in line for the presidency, Orlando, 39, always wanted to be a trial lawyer. “If you’re not a criminal lawyer, and you want to see the inside of a courtroom on a regular basis, the best options are either family law or personal injury law,” he says.

Besides getting to appear in court frequently, Orlando was also attracted to personal injury law by the opportunity to assist people at a point in their life when they are most in need without having to ask for a retainer upfront.

“It’s the only area of law where you don’t have to ask a client for money,” Orlando explains. “The only time money changes hands is when you write a cheque for the plaintiff.”

Of course personal injury lawyers don’t win every case and often have to write off financial loses. “Good cases offset bad cases,” Orlando says.

When not in the office or in court, Orlando is kept busy at home by his four children aged 12, 10, 5 and 3 — all of whom are involved in a widerange of activities including horseback riding, ballet and soccer. “My wife and I are glorified taxi drivers, shuttling kids to programs,” Orlando quips.

Talk to some insurance defence lawyers, and one would be led to believe that OTLA – which restricts its membership to lawyers who do no more than five percent defence work – keeps detailed dossiers on the strengths and weaknesses of every single insurance defence lawyer in Ontario.

Both Orlando and Brown strenuously deny this rumour, but say that OTLA members are very generous in sharing legal precedents, strategies and advice on the association’s chat line.
As president of OTLA, Brown plans to fight restrictions on the ability of innocent accident victims to receive compensation, specifically the high threshold and deductible set out in the Insurance Act.
“There has to be some balance. In the last five years insurance profits have skyrocketed while the ability for accident victims to be compensated has been drastically curtailed.”