Osler Hoskin & Harcourt has brought in two new partners to spearhead its burgeoning digital assets and blockchain practice. Matthew Burgoyne and Laure Fouin will be co-chairs of the group, which will be part of the Canadian firm’s corporate and emerging high-growth teams.
The firm sees a “long-term opportunity” and realizes the area isn’t a passing fad, said Burgoyne. “The establishment of the two co-chairs nationally is a strategic move by Osler to further cement their presence in the industry in Canada.”
The duo told Law.com International the firm already has lawyers experienced with crypto and digital assets, so they’re coming in with the expectation of forming a more formal practice group. As they build that group, Fouin said first they’re canvassing the firm’s internal talent and then looking outside only if they see gaps that need to be filled.
“We are only here to structure something that is extremely successful already,” she said.
Are they worried about starting a new practice group in what some consider a downturn in the crypto markets?
Boom-and-bust cycles are typical, and Burgoyne said he’s confident prices of cryptocurrencies overall will go up again—even if some currencies and trading platforms don’t survive—because the industry is constantly innovating.
“I think we shouldn’t forget that traditional capital markets have been going through these phases for 200 years. And every single one of these phases helped consolidate and mature markets,” Fouin said.
The co-chairs come from different sides of the same (bit)coin and country. “I think what we’re doing right now at Osler is building a real pan-Canadian practice,” said Fouin, “which I don’t think is something common among any other national firms.”
Fouin’s practice focuses on financial institutions, financial products and services regulation, securities regulation and investment products (including crypto assets and crypto contracts), structured finance and debt capital markets, and fintech.
She hails from McCarthy Tétrault, where she practiced corporate and securities law for more than 11 years including as a summer and articling student, according to her LinkedIn bio. She’ll be a partner in Montreal, where she moved from France in 2008 to do her LLM and then Ph.D. in financial derivatives at McGill University.
Burgoyne was one of the first Canadian lawyers to act for cryptocurrency companies in Canada and also represented one of Canada’s first non-fungible token platforms, according to the firm. He has supported the formation of cryptocurrency exchanges and advised digital token and coin developers, cryptocurrency ATM providers, cryptocurrency investors, and cryptocurrency-related investment funds.
Burgoyne, who will be based in Osler’s Calgary office, comes from a smaller regional law firm and said joining Osler gives him the chance to focus his practice 100 percent on crypto and digital assets but also have a strong support network to provide broader service to his clients.
Both have worked with many startups, but as those clients are growing—both geographically and in dollar terms—they will need a robust and experienced team to provide advisory services, said Burgoyne.
He said he wanted to continue to service his startup clients that have now “become billion-dollar clients” and that wasn’t possible in his previous firm.
Fouin, who has worked in the area since 2015 when she was “taking on clients that may have been unusual in the space before [but are] now completely usual,” said those clients fit in well with Osler’s emerging high-growth team.
Osler has more than 520 lawyers across five offices in Canada and one in New York.
