As Lawson Lundell enters its next chapter, new managing partner Karen MacMillan is focused on three things: equipping the next generation for business development, strengthening connections in a rapidly grown partnership, and weaving AI thoughtfully into the firm’s business model. She brings to the role a deeply collaborative style shaped by more than two decades at the firm, from summer student to the top job, and by mentors who, as she puts it, taught her “that I could do the hard things despite my own self-doubt — and that I could and should find joy in doing it.”
For MacMillan, who served as deputy managing partner for the past three years, the appointment is less a career milestone than a responsibility to the firm’s people and sterling reputation. She aims to steward Lawson Lundell to new heights without losing the culture of trust, generosity, respect and teamwork that she credits for both its client relationships and internal longevity.
“I have a very successful practice and I enjoy practicing law, but I’m also someone who loves a certain level of intensity in my life,” MacMillan explains. “This kind of change brings the intensity that I haven’t had in a sustained way for a while. I’m enjoying the new challenge.”
Q: Going into your first year as managing partner, what are your top priorities?
Karen MacMillan (KM): Aside from getting my bearings and dealing with the annual budgets and partner compensation, my hope is that the first year will allow me to focus on three primary matters, all of which I was very clear on coming into this role.
The first is helping our young people understand and lean into business development and supporting them in those efforts. We’ve noticed that many younger lawyers, some of whom have spent formative years working remotely, need encouragement and support to connect in person with people, which of course leads to business development opportunities. We’re working on ways to help them reconnect with their peers, their clients and the legal world generally.
My second priority is strengthening connections between our partners. We’ve had 10 years of relatively rapid growth, and between that growth and the pandemic years, many of our partners are feeling like we are less connected as a partnership than we have historically been. Being very connected is such a part of our success, so this year we’re putting real effort and resources into reconnecting at the partnership level.
And then number three, of course, is AI: figuring out the right steps at the right time and how to shift our business model where necessary to incorporate AI into our practice.
Q: How would you describe your leadership style, and how do you hope it will shape the firm’s culture?
KM: I’ve had lots of leadership opportunities at this firm and have enjoyed all of them, from small roles as an associate right through to today. There’s no question that my leadership style, and the way I’ve always functioned in leading my practice and people, is collaborative.
I’m a huge believer that if you’re surrounded by exceptionally smart and experienced people, it would be foolish not to tap into those assets at every opportunity. This partnership is comprised of so many remarkable people who bring diverse backgrounds, worldviews and experiences to the table, so there’s a huge amount of value added by listening to those voices.
At the end of the day, there are a lot of decisions that will ultimately be mine alone to make, but I can make them from a more comfortable place knowing that I’ve heard the different perspectives. I hope that because our partners recognize their views genuinely matter and can sometimes shape meaningful decisions — and that even when they don’t move the needle, they are at least being heard — the overall culture of the firm will continue to reflect what we already have here: a meaningful culture of trust, respect and teamwork. I’m hoping that a collaborative approach will only reinforce that.
Q: Looking at the Canadian legal market right now, what do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges, and how is the firm positioning itself?
KM: AI adoption and how it will impact the billable-hours business model is on everyone’s mind. We as a firm have been in the experimentation and pilot-project phase for a couple of years. In 2025 we adopted the use of Thomson Reuters CoCounsel firmwide, which we believe immediately adds value for our clients. We continue to review and pilot other AI technology, and we expect that to be ongoing for the foreseeable future as we seek to improve productivity, efficiency and client service and adjust the value proposition on offer.
I’m also always thinking about cybersecurity, which is a challenge for almost all businesses. One of our third‑party cybersecurity contractors described the effort as a never-ending arms race where the good guys — being us — are constantly upgrading security measures and the bad actors are continuously monitoring and finding workarounds. That conceptualization really reflects our ongoing process: we are constantly monitoring, pivoting and upgrading, through both internal staff – some of whom are entirely focused on this - and external providers, to try to stay ahead of the bad actors.
The third area is a bit of a challenge as well as an opportunity: the international expansion of law firms into Canada in recent years. We’ve seen a number of U.S. firms expand into Toronto, and there’s an expectation that there will be more. Although most of that expansion has been focused in Toronto, we’ve also seen a couple of Vancouver offices open, and there are likely to be more. That means new competition for regional powerhouses like us, especially on the talent front, so we’re watching it closely. But it could also represent real opportunities to work with those firms in one form or another, to be determined.
Q: How are evolving client expectations influencing the way you deliver legal services and value?
KM: This really takes us back to AI. AI is already letting us work faster, but as we continue to examine ways to best integrate it into our practice and business model, we’re also thinking about new service offerings that can work to the mutual advantage of our clients and us, including the possibility of offerings that may move away from the billable-hours model. We’re experimenting with some of those options already and expect to eventually offer some of those value‑based options as a matter of routine.
One of the great advantages of being a regional firm like us, as opposed to being a national or international firm, is that we’re able to be comparatively nimble and make changes faster and more efficiently. That leaves us well‑positioned to innovate and deliver increased value to our clients with new initiatives.
Q: Talent attraction, development and retention are top of mind for every managing partner. What’s your vision for supporting and advancing your lawyers and staff, particularly the next generation of leaders?
KM: This is a topic of fundamental importance and something I think about a lot. Honestly, I think I have a huge advantage because I learned leadership from some of the original greats here. I started as a summer student at Lawson Lundell, and I found success as a student, an associate and a partner all in one place.
When I look back on how that happened, I can easily identify a small handful of mentors, leaders and sponsors who made it possible. I had the good fortune of working with talented partners who forced me to think creatively and do the hard mental work to succeed. Most importantly, they taught me that I could do the hard things despite my own self‑doubt and that I could and should find joy in doing it. That’s part of our firm’s culture and a big reason for our success.
I’ve learned leadership and how to find joy in the practice of law from some of the best, and I constantly lean into those experiences as I try to support and teach future leaders in that same model. I also feel very lucky to have such a long history here and such amazing mentors and leaders—I really think that’s the reason I’m in this role now.
Q: DEI remains a perennial issue for the profession. What does this work look like at Lawson Lundell right now?
KM: This has also long been an issue of importance to me personally. Many years ago, I was our firm’s first chief inclusiveness officer, and I set up a lot of our initial programs around DEI. As a firm, we’ve always been committed to doing the work necessary to continuously improve our diversity and inclusiveness metrics and to make sure all members of the firm feel safe, supported and welcomed. We’ve had a very capable and active chief inclusion officer for quite some time now who is focused on our initiatives in this area, and we continue to do the work to be the kind of place that feels welcoming, safe and supportive.
On gender diversity specifically, well over 30% of our partnership are now women, and well over 40% of our leadership positions are held by women, which we believe to be above market and are quite proud of. We continue to sponsor and participate in many events and sponsorships in support of diversity, equity and inclusion — 20 or 30 every year — and many of our lawyers are actively involved in key organizations. It’s something we spend meaningful resources on and genuinely consider a high priority.
Q: How will you balance growth with preserving the firm’s existing strengths and culture?
KM: This one is really important to us. We’ve always been a firm that primarily grows from within, which has been helpful in preserving our culture, but we also hire a significant number of laterals, particularly over the last 10 years. People here — and in the broader legal community —understand that our culture is different and special. We don’t just pay lip service to our values, which are primarily trust, generosity, respect and teamwork. These values have been expressed and lived by us for much of our 100‑plus‑year history, and we continue to reaffirm them frequently, both through formal examination of our culture and well‑being and indirectly through our actions.
We’re a firm that provides top‑tier legal services to amazing clients, including some of the world’s largest companies, while also being notably nice people who genuinely love their place of work, which isn’t necessarily true of a lot of law firms. Employee and lawyer health and wellness is a genuine priority in good times and bad — we don’t just talk about it, we actually do it. We recognize that it’s our people who make us great, and that maintaining our culture is key to ongoing professional success because it lets us serve our clients in ways that not all firms can. If you don’t have the kind of personal trust and relationships we have, especially among partners, you can’t provide the same kind of service.
As long as those values and actions remain deeply rooted in our everyday behaviour, I’m comfortable that we can maintain that culture even through periods of growth.
Q: What key metrics or milestones will you be watching to gauge whether the firm is on track with your strategic vision?
KM: In addition to the obvious financial performance metrics and client‑satisfaction scores, we are always keenly watching and acting on employee and lawyer health and satisfaction. That’s very important for us.
Q: Looking ahead, what do you hope clients, colleagues and the broader market will say about Lawson Lundell under your leadership?
KM: What I hope they say is that Lawson Lundell continued in its long‑established pattern of excellent client service while successfully pivoting and recalibrating in response to significant market pressures and fundamental changes — all while maintaining its position as a top pick for exceptional lawyers seeking to work with high‑calibre clients and to love what they do and who they do it with.
Q: Finally, is there anything else you’d add about stepping into the managing partner role?
KM: I see being appointed as managing partner as a huge privilege that I take very seriously. Everything else I’ve said really points to the fact that it’s my intention to honour that privilege in ways that I hope will make all of our partners proud.
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Karen MacMillan is Lawson Lundell's Managing Partner as well as Co-Lead of the firm’s Global Mining Group. She practices corporate/commercial, mining, and energy law with an emphasis on commercial arrangements in the mining and energy sectors. She has significant experience with asset-level acquisitions and dispositions, earn-in, option and joint venture agreements, royalty agreements, procurement, construction and engineering agreements, and other complex ownership arrangements.