At 77 in the Global 100, Canada’s biggest firm, McCarthy Tétrault, remained in the same position as last year after a respectable but hardly overwhelming 11 per cent rise in turnover.

That said, the firm is in an optimistic mood with new chairman Iain Scott. It landed some of the top files in Canada over the past 12 months, perhaps the choicest being representing Falconbridge in the frenzy that saw first Inco then Swiss firm Xstrata make unsolicited bids of up to £9.6bn ($17.5bn) for the Canadian mining giant. Unsurprisingly, the firm topped Thomson Financial and Bloomberg’s rankings of Canadian M&A advisers in Q3 2006, managing a staggering 83 announced deals.

Although McCarthy is very much a corporate/M&A firm (and the disadvantages of this were felt in the last M&A downturn in 2004, when McCarthy had to let 14 lawyers go), there are signs that it is starting to build elsewhere. It has hired a handful of associates in its real estate practice this year to take advantage of the Canadian property boom.

The Seven Sisters (the group of seven elite, Toronto-based firms that are full-service) firm is unusual in that it has capability in both common-law Ontario and civil-law Quebec, where it has 169 lawyers in Montreal.

Also, the firm is one of the four Seven Sisters that has a sizeable presence – 75 lawyers – in Calgary, Canada’s hottest legal market and the hub for energy deals. It has been focusing on the area of late, adding energy partners Don Davies and Terry Hughes to the office from local stalwart Macleod Dixon.

Outside Canada, the firm has a three-partner London office that was rocked this year by the defection of managing partner Glen Ireland and the firm’s global co-head of mining Tanneke Heersche to White & Case. Although the firm has doubled in size in London in the past two years, fuelled by Canadian companies’ fondness for AIM, it is yet to replace those key partners.

• The Top 100: 76-100