Jordan Goldblatt

2I'm good, Pulat. How, how are you doing today?

4Well, look, I'm glad to be here. I like that the reference is to a leading firm. I appreciate that. So I'm excited to be here and answer questions as honestly as I can within the confines of my partnership confidentiality agreement and remaining licensed by the Law Society.

6I—

8Yes.

10Well, I think it's the definition.

12So what North American Studies is, is it's an attempt to be a liberal arts education similar to what you might see in the United States. So it focuses on history, economics, political science, and history— history, economics, policy— so history, economics, political science, and English across the United States, Canada, Mexico. And I think as my family thought of it when I applied, It's really just becoming really good at Jeopardy. It's really focusing on categories that will help you in that game show if that's where, where your career ends up taking you. But that, that's what it was.

14I think, you know, including my siblings, there's probably other Goldblatts who are much more famous than I am. But yes, my— I think what you're talking about is my father is a lawyer as well. He is a founding partner at what is now Goldblatt Partners. And what I often think about is long-term, the goal should be for every firm to have Goldblatt in the firm name. It's frankly, it's just a good name. You know, there's an old Saturday Night Live skit where Jon Bon Jovi is putting together that band. He says, look, Bon Jovi is just a good name. Nothing to do with me. But yes, my father is the Howard Goldblatt of Goldblatt Partners.

16Well, I would say work, not even really work with. So I, I started at Lenczner Slaght and was there for a number of years and then moved to, to what was then Sack Goldblatt Mitchell. And really, when I, when I went there to Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, it was to build out their civil litigation practice, which was always where I was. So my father was practicing and continues to practice in the labor world. He does some public law work as well. But you know, I think about all the lawyers who I've had the fortune of working with in my career, and my father is not one of them. We have never been on a case together.

17He's done cases with some of my partners here, but we've never actually worked together. We were partners in a law firm together. But I only saw him either as a father or as a partner. That's the extent of our relationship, which is actually pretty good as I reflect on it.

19Yeah, so we, we have a really, really good relationship, a really special relationship. And he influenced me in the way that I want to practice law. And, and to be more specific growing up, I have a very distinct memory of him running from our house to catch a bus to go to work with two huge briefcases in, in either hand. And I also equally remember him showing up at you know, school recitals and whatnot, again with those two huge briefcases in his hand coming directly from work. And I guess what I'm saying is he always made sure that we knew that notwithstanding that he was working incredibly hard building his practice, especially at a time when we didn't have the technology or he didn't have the technology where he could work remotely, he came home, he was there for us.

20And, you know, then as I, I learned as I grew older, he went back downtown to the office to work. And so what, what struck me as I started to build my own career is just recognizing that, you know, it is a lot of hard work to build a practice, but, but being there for, for your family and being there for the people who are meaningful to you. So when I think about the ways that he kind of inspired my practice. It's, it's really about keeping those priorities in order. I have seen him in court. When I was in law school, he had a case in front of the Supreme Court, and I tagged along to, to go and watch.

21So I, I got to see him as an advocate. I, I, I don't know how similar or different our styles are, but I, I wouldn't have worked closely enough with him to be able to take anything substantive from his actual legal expertise. He'll be happy to hear me say expertise but really that influence was more in just making time for the things that matter outside of the practice of law.

23No, it's, it's, it's, it's not. Okay, so the allegedly human part is— I— there's a couple things about the way that lawyers speak, which I always think is kind of funny. And one of them is this allegedly word that we seem to want to insert into every conversation in, in, in court, obviously. Well, it's quite obvious, you know, that if, if you're quoting something from the other side's statement of claim, you, I don't think you really need to say allegedly after every sentence.

25But, but we, we, we do it, you know, it's the same thing where if you're pleading in a statement of defense and you're doing an alternative pleading and you say, you know, to the extent that there was a, a, a breach of the standard of care bracket, which is denied, like I've already denied it for the past 15 paragraphs, but I'm still gonna say, which is denied to avoid somebody saying, well, he didn't deny it when he pled in the alternative and therefore it must be an admission. So anyway, A long answer to the question, why does it say allegedly human? Because there's some things that, you know, I'm pretty sure I am human and not AI, although we could have that conversation.

26But we say it anyway. In terms of the Slytherin part, I think that there's a— and first, let's take the Muggle killing part off the table. That's, that's not what I'm about. But there's a lot of practice as a lawyer which I think ties into some Slytherin characteristics. So I, I think to succeed in this profession, especially in the, you know, commercial litigation world where we're in, you, you have to have ambition. You, you have to be out there deliberately trying to obtain clients and make connections and, and do those things. And I think that's— that kind of ambition is perhaps a little bit— the other part, I think, is that our job involves non-stop persuasion.

27And it starts from the time where you're introduced to a client, and you've got to persuade and make the client comfortable with the fact that you are with them and on their side, and their dispute is as important to you as it is to them. And you build that relationship through persuasion. Then you turn to the lawyer on the other side, and you've got to be persuasive in a way that leads the other lawyer to, to understand that you want to work collaboratively with them to the extent that there's a possibility to obtain some kind of a resolution before you, you go all the way to a trial, and you have to build that relationship.

28And, and that involves an element of persuasion and perhaps a little bit of a Slytherin kind of characteristic. And guess what? If all that doesn't work out, then you've got to build a relationship with, with the court, and you've got to be persuasive to a judge and build that rapport and have credibility and, and, and keep all those relationships in line and intact so that you can achieve something which is meaningful for your— the first person who we talked about in this chain. And, and that always struck me as a little bit Slytherin. I, I don't want to think of it as being two-faced because I, I think you're your best self as an advocate when you're not two-faced and you're being authentic to who you are.

29But there's a recognition, I think, that you've got to be able to build these relationships and find the parts of your personality, the other side's personality, to, to, to really be able to advocate and achieve something meaningful throughout the entire process. And that's, that's a really long answer to the question of why that's part of my Twitter bio, excuse me. And perhaps that's why Twitter— I don't know if it's still limited to 140 characters, but perhaps it's better off so then you don't get all of that and you just get the potentially Slytherin or whatever it says on the Twitter bio.

33It's a really good question. And even in your question, there's a lot that, you know, kind of was resonating in my brain in terms of how to answer it. I think my starting point, though, is, as a litigator, I don't think you can be, you know, you can move to the next level as it is until you've seen a number of files all the way through. Until you've done a trial, until you've done an appeal, it's really hard to understand what a discovery transcript matters for, or, or how does it matter when you don't answer that undertaking and someone's at trial saying, well, you didn't answer that undertaking, now you got an adverse inference against you.

34So I, I think you need kind of that whole toolkit unlocked before you can start to think about Okay, if the end process is going to be a trial decision, what are those things that actually matter along the way? But to your question about, you know, do you become kind of a better litigator when you're not as paranoid, to use your word, about making mistakes? I think the answer to that is, is is yes. And I think it all comes down to a question of what's really effective advocacy. I would love to do a statement of defense one day which is just, you know, one paragraph and just says, no, this, this is not what happened.

35You know, just, just something really concise and, and direct, which, which, which of course complies with the rules of of pleadings, but says in one paragraph or one page, everything that would otherwise be put into 30 pages. And, you know, I, I probably won't, but I, I think part of moving away from the fear of making mistakes is recognizing what do you actually need to do to succeed, to succeed. And by that, I mean succeed as, as counsel and moving backwards then from how do I get there in a way that makes sense to me, makes sense to the court, makes sense to the client. And, and I think that's kind of what building your practice and your style of advocacy is all about.

36It's finding those things which make you more effective as an advocate without the fear of Am I going to do this wrong, or have I, have I missed something?

38Well, you know, I think you, you probably tend to remember the things that didn't work. Far more often than you remember the things that actually did work. I, I have a very clear recollection of the first time I ever cross-examined an expert witness. It was in the course of a, of an inquest, and coroner's counsel said to me before I, I went up to cross-examine, are you, I, I think it was an articling student, and the coroner's counsel said, are you gonna cross-examine this expert? And I said, I think so. And the coroner's counsel said, well, just be careful. You know, all the other lawyers have gotten quite burned by doing so.

39And I thought, ah, I'm an articling student. I know what I'm doing. I'm gonna, gonna take a shot at this. And I, I scripted my questions very carefully. I asked my first question. I got a great admission. I thought, this is good. Second question, even better. And I thought, I'm gonna try something a little different and just watched everything. That I built through two really good questions disintegrate.

41exactly. So the lesson, of course, learned from there is one question less, especially with experts, is, is the way to go. But in terms of trying something different that, that worked, the, the only other thing that I can that kind of comes to mind is before the province introduced anti-SLAPP legislation, so legislation designed at limiting or eliminating litigation aimed at limiting public participation. I was retained for a number of individuals who were sued by a mayor in the weeks leading up to an election, and at the end of that case, on which my client succeeded, I obtained an elevated cost award just under kind of the regular Rule 57 cost regime, and convincing the court that the litigation was effectively a strategic litigation against public participation, even in the absence of that legislation having yet come to fruition.

42Now, to be fair, isn't— I, I believe it was before the legislature at that time But you know, that legislation did not exist. And so bringing that forward to the court and saying, you, you still have the tools to do this, notwithstanding that the legislation isn't yet there was, you know, something I think back in terms of trying to find a way to achieve something from, for a client without a direct path to so doing. And, and, you know, I don't wanna say working around the edges to accomplish it, but being a little bit creative in using the tools that were available at the time.

44So I, I have a few institutional clients from whom I get regular work. I get referrals from other lawyers throughout the city, and then there are people who seem to contact me because of other work that I've done. So I'm very fortunate to feel like I have a number of different sources of work that can bring interesting files to my desk at any number of or any number of ways. I feel like most of the work that I do, or more of it, is on the defense side. So typically when a file comes in, my first thought is, is, is, is there a way that I can quickly get rid of this case on behalf of a client by way of bringing some kind of a preliminary motion to get rid of it?

45And you know, with the amount of time it takes for litigation to wind its way through the, the courts, if there's some kind of way to quickly bring resolution to the file, and I perhaps I was thinking more in terms of a motion to strike, but equally if there's a resolution on the table quickly that makes sense for everybody, then that's usually the first place where my brain goes. From there, what I'll probably try and do, or as part of it, is try to find one of the really great people that I get to work with to assist me in the file. And, and then it's, you know, the, the things that all of us do as litigators figuring out what the pleading is going to look like, figuring out what documents are important, and building a theory of the case as, as early as possible, and sharing that theory of the case with the client.

46I, I, I really think it's important to make sure the client knows what is happening at all times. You never get in trouble from a client for over-reporting. You do for under-reporting. And, and I think our job as lawyers is really making sure our clients understand what the range of outcomes are at any given, at any different stage of, of a case. So building a plan, sharing that plan with the clients, and then of course as you go through a case revising that plan as new information comes to your attention.

48So I, I like to start from step one and revisit everything as much as possible from the beginning. And, and that means pulling out the statement of claim and pulling out the defenses and, and the request for particulars and the request to inspect and really trying to piece the case back together in my mind and figuring out what's important. Because I, I, I feel like too often when you get to the precipice of trial, the issues that you think are, you know, at the forefront of your mind may not be the ones that matter and have mattered. And recognizing that you're going to be giving this case to a judge who has no familiarity with it whatsoever.

49And so trying to put yourself back into a bit of a first position as to where did we start from I think is really helpful to trying to figure out, okay, where is it that we want to go and where do we, we need to go? I, I think it's always very interesting to look back and see how a case was pled and Can the plaintiff get to where they want to go based on what's been pled? Can, can you stop them as a defendant with the way that it's been pled? And is the evidence there that you need to either get to the end result or, or effectively stop the other side?

50So I, I, I really try and put myself back into kind of a first position mindset. Even though you're looking at the end result being a trial.

53So My general view on the rules is everything should be as easy as possible, and, and that includes pleadings. I think any possible opportunity to avoid motions at all should be taken. And so to, to answer your question directly, should pleading amendments be easier throughout the course of the litigation? Absolutely. Because at the end of the day, you're still going to end up in front of a trial judge. So imagine a situation where at least the document world is not going to change. And typically, if we're dealing with, you know, two parties who have complied with their obligations to produce any document with a semblance of relevancy, you're not expanding the universe of the productions by expanding the pleadings.

54You're changing the framework within which the legal issues are perhaps going to be analyzed. So, you know who cares? I like— and I mean that kind of facetiously in terms of, you know, does the, the legal framework have to change, or is it— should it be contested? Who cares? Just do it. Do it. Change everything. Not change everything, obviously, but if, if there's going to be amendments to a pleading required, it should be Very easy to be done. And then let's go, let's, let's go forward. You know, the, the, the more time that is spent on litigation that does not actually matter to the dispute, anything that can be done to, to take out those interim steps, I think should be done.

55And moreover, with the strain on judicial resources, I think it increasingly has to be be done. So that would be my view of what should happen when parties want to amend.

59I, I think there's no question that the number of trials is significantly less, but I don't know if that matters from an access to justice perspective. I think as a lawyer, my preference is always going to be to do a trial than a motion. But I don't think that's, frankly, I don't wanna say ever in my client's interest, but I don't think it's usually in my client's interest because of the cost and time involved in a trial. One of the things that, you know, in the course of my career that I've been most frustrated with is when I started practice, summary judgment used to be easier to obtain. And by that, I don't mean winning a summary judgment motion.

60I mean booking a summary judgment motion. And the court, the Supreme Court, then comes out with Hryniak, which is supposed to make summary judgment an alternate form of dispute resolution and easier to get. And somehow we've gotten to the converse where summary judgment is more difficult. Partial summary judgment doesn't exist anymore in this province, in almost all cases, with the result being that we seem now more locked into trials that don't happen than we ever have been. From a practice perspective, trials are the most important things for a lawyer to do to develop their practice because that, that is what everything is moving towards. That's how you know if the evidence you've elicited or understood along the way matters or, or not.

61And the lack of opportunities for lawyers to do trials, I think, probably creates situations where when you get one, it's, it's a different it, it's more difficult for the lawyer. The more you do, the, the easier the They are. But, you know, do I think that there should be more trials? No. But that doesn't mean that I don't want to do more trials.

63Yes, that's right. Yeah.

65I, I, I don't, I don't know. And I say that from having started my firm at, at a boutique. I feel like I've always been more aware of the existence of, of really good boutique firms, which kind of, you know, have been there at least since I started to practice law. So has there been explode— is there been an explosion of, of boutique firms? I don't, I don't, I don't know whether quantitatively there is. I could, I certainly do feel that a lot of the really, really good litigation work is routinely coming through boutiques. And I don't know if that's what I would have said at the outset of, of when I started to practice law.

68So I, I, I think the best way I could answer that question is that I do believe that individual clients who are outside of a full-service firm will search out the litigator or lawyer who is best responsive to the, to the dispute that they have. And whether that is a boutique or a lawyer practicing in a boutique or a lawyer practicing individually, I, I don't think that dichotomy necessarily matters. I think larger institutions who have full-service firms are more likely to say to somebody at the firm, here's a dispute. Who's the best person within the firm to do it, and in many cases won't know that litigator in advance of that file coming to that litigator.

69But certainly within the boutique solo practice— solo practice— solo professional world, I, I do think individual clients are more likely to reach out to an individual and, and a person that they know as between a sole practitioner— I said the word practitioner right that time— and, and a boutique. I, I think the only real significant difference is I, I don't think of our firm as being a bunch of sole practitioners, but we all do have our own practices. We all do have our own clients. I, I think what a boutique has, which is a little bit of a benefit over a sole practitioner is the ability to bring other people into a file and provide a little bit more depth of support depending on what the issue is.

70If I was just practicing by myself, number one, I couldn't take on the volume of work that I have, and number two, I wouldn't have access to the really good legal minds which some times have been working on one of my colleagues' case and can bring their information from that other case into the work that I'm doing. So I, I kind of tend to think of it as, you know, two-dimensional, three-dimensional a little bit. And so at least within a boutique structure, when you have other people who you're regularly interacting with, I, I think it does give a little bit more depth to the practice and to the work on the file that ultimately assists the client.

72So in, in the 5 years since we've started this firm, we have almost never been at a point where we've felt that we've had the right staffing matrix. I think we're around 21 lawyers now, and we've always felt that there, there's not enough, notwithstanding that when we started at 9 lawyers and we hired our, our 10th, I think I had a small heart attack thinking about, okay, are we actually going to be able to support another person? But we've always kind of continually been on the lookout for individuals who we think could help and benefit the firm. People have come to us all kinds of different ways. We have— we make a deliberate attempt to try and go to the Ontario Court of Appeal every year and do some recruiting there.

73But other than that, we've had people who have been introduced to us organically from friends of the firm. We've had people reach out to us, you know, younger lawyers who have said, look, I see the stuff that you're doing. I've heard about the environment and I'd be interested in joining. Can we have a discussion? So we've been very open to being contacted through any number of different channels and trying to figure out what, what our needs are and what allows us to kind of advance as a firm while trying to keep a culture at the firm which we think is reflective of the way that we want to practice, being someone which is inclusive and collaborative and allows people to be themselves in the work that they do.

75You know, the thing that we really want is somebody who, first of all, you have to want to do civil litigation. And I know that's kind of a strange thing to say, but when when we meet with somebody and they say, well, I think I might be interested in doing civil litigation. I had a friend who said civil litigation would be good. We don't have the, you know, we're not going to hire somebody, to be honest, who thinks they want to do civil litigation. You have to know that you want to do this in order to be here. We're not at a point where we're going to expend resources in somebody who thinks they might want to try this.

76So that's kind of one of the things I, I tend to think about. But beyond that, we're looking for people who are interested in the law, and that can come across in any number of ways. You can be interested in it from kind of a jurisprudential perspective. You can be interested in it from an advocacy perspective. You can be interested in it from a social justice perspective. But, but somebody who is thoughtful and wants to be involved in, in the aspects of this profession that are meaningful is someone who, from a firm perspective, we want to be having a discussion with.

78Yes.

80It is a fairly regular stream of work. The number of times lawyers are sued against is not an insignificant number. There's a bunch of firms, of course, who are preferred counsel throughout the province. I feel fortunate to be doing the LawPRO work. I love acting for lawyers. I love the responsibility of saying to a colleague, let me help you with an issue. You know, I, I think it's a privilege to be able to, to work with another lawyer who has found themselves named as a defendant in a lawsuit. And I think it's really helpful in terms of the way that I practice on my own files to see where there are circumstances where a client has come back and said to another lawyer at the end of their claim, Now I'm going to name you as a defendant in the lawsuit.

81I think it's very helpful in terms of my own practice and the way that I practice it. And frankly, also the way that I deal with other members of this community, recognizing that they might be an insured on a file at some point in the future.

83I have a really broad LawPRO practice. I, I've done cases in the insolvency area. I've done a bunch of, you know, just standard negligence cases, done a bunch of real estate cases for, for LawPRO. The circumstances where a lawyer can be sued by a dissatisfied client are not closed, as they say.

85So the, the biggest place where claims seem to arise is in the stage of clients understanding what it is that the lawyer is doing. So the lawyer thinks they unders— the lawyer thinks they have instruction to do X on a file, whether it's bring a motion or withdraw an admission or any of those things. And then something happens and the client says, well, I didn't instruct you to do that. And that's a situation where invariably the lawyer says, well, I had 55 phone calls and I spoke with the client and they understood what we were doing, and now I can't understand why they're suing me saying they didn't. And I say to them, where is your file note?

86Where is your email? Where, where is something where we can say to the court, this is something where the client understood what they were doing and gave instruction? And so that's the most frequent thing where in the course of a file, if the lawyer had taken literally 3 to 5 minutes and sent the email saying, I confirmed that we have discussed X and Y and you have instructed me to do that, then, then even though you can obviously still get sued, the, the nature of the defense changes considerably. The— so that, that's kind of the first piece. The other thing I would say is lawyers need to remember that our job is to give advice and the client's job is to give instruction.

87And always keeping clear in your own mind that it's our, our, you know, we're just retained to give our thoughts and insights into what it is that we think should happen, or excuse me, and, and it's the client who gives the instruction. So recognizing that it's not the lawyer who gets to make the call, it's the client. And so kind of keeping that perspective throughout the life of a file is, is one way that I consistently think of could avoid a number of claims at least in the LawPRO cases that I've seen.

89I, yeah, so to start my answer, you properly characterized my love of sport. I, I could tell you early in my career I did a retainer for Tennis Canada where I explicitly wrote into the retainer agreement, I get to tell people I was doing work for Tennis Canada because I thought like, this is really cool, I, I love tennis. And in fact one of the things that I insisted we do is meet at the National Tennis Center, and I walked on the court at what is now, I think It's at York University. I can't remember what it's called. I don't want to get the corporate name of who actually owns that arena wrong, but standing on that court was one of the highlights of at least my sport practice.

90But the sport world presents really unique challenges for the organizations themselves and counsel who get involved in those disputes. It's a really difficult space to navigate between the obligations that are owed from, from an athlete, an athlete to a national sports organization, to a provincial sports organization. Where do the coaches fit into this? For many of the organizations, you've got referees who have a seat at the table. For some of the national sports organizations, you have grassroots-level organizations who sometimes have some membership rights. And so it's a really interesting interplay between all these various participants and something that is really done for most of the people involved as a, as a real passion, especially where in this country there are very few individuals who are going to be making the kind of cash that you see from professional athletes at, you know, in kind of the baseball, basketball, hockey, in those sports.

91And I haven't even talked about the doping cases, which I had the opportunity to do. So they're really interesting cases with, with clients who who care. The athletes are, you know, coming back to the doping cases. If someone is looking at a 4-year suspension in the middle of their career that 4 years is probably going to take them to the end of their career. So there, there, there are good cases which have high stakes for the people who are involved. And I think it's really important for the parties involved to get good counsel. To help them through those disputes.

93Me too. This was great. A lot of fun.