-Me Véronique Théorêt. Photo: LinkedIn
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After practicing for 10 years at Fraser Milner Casgrain (now Dentons) in real estate and commercial law, Me Véronique Théorêt made the leap into business in 2010 within the Montoni group, a construction and property management company.
Ten years later, she has just been appointed legal vice-president, acquisitions and financing. His colleague Geneviève Grégoire, also a lawyer, has just been appointed vice-president, legal, development and construction. Both will now be responsible for developing Montoni’s operational action plan and legal strategy.
Droit-inc spoke with Me Théorêt about his new functions, and also reviewed his motivations for leaving a large office to practice in a company.
Droit-inc: You’ve been with Montoni for ten years … What were your duties at the start?
Véronique Théorêt: Yes, it’s been 10 years and a few weeks! Initially, it was as support for what were mainly construction contracts, general contracts … Then, the company evolved. Previously, the company was primarily a builder and general contractor. And over the years, we have diversified our activities, and we have become more and more developer and property manager, in addition to remaining a builder and general contractor.
So in my old life, I really had expertise in acquisitions and financing, so we put that expertise to good use, and we continued …
In 2013, I became Director, Acquisitions and Financing, so we still continued to do construction contracts, but with a more clearly identified specialization for acquisitions and financing.
This appointment must be a great achievement for you?
Yes quite! I’m happy. It’s a team effort, too … to set up the team, as far as investments are concerned. So we work a lot with the investment team, the CFO, the people who work on the numbers and the pro forma, to be sure that these acquisitions and financing, or the leases that we sign, it looks good … And in our legal acquisitions and financing team, there are three of us. So there is me, a legal advisor, who does several files, and an assistant who works with us.
We decided to structure the legal department a little more, in which there are seven of us. There is the legal vice-president, Franca Riso, we are two associate legal vice-presidents, Geneviève Grégoire and me … to try to support the growth of the company. There are important needs, we are really very busy … but it allows us to develop expertise and respond correctly to the needs of all our internal clients.
Yes, because right now there is a real estate boom, you must be very busy …
We are lucky, we touch wood, in the current situation, things are going really well. At the industrial level, it is very strong, and at the residential level too … We have started residential development, so there are a lot of demands there too.
Concretely, what does your job consist of?
We say all the time that we have only one client: it’s the company. For us, the acquisition and financing team, we work with the management team, with the development team, with the finance team, and also everything related to property management.
It goes from the supervision of due diligence to the negotiation of acquisition documents, we also have many discussions with the banks, therefore the negotiation of contractual documents, at the level of financial terms … also leases, with our tenants. We also have partners, so the partnership documents, depending on the structure …
What made you leave private practice for a position in a company 10 years ago?
It’s a combination of circumstances … From a geographical point of view, my office was at Place Ville-Marie, and I lived in Laval. I was on my second maternity leave, and work-family balance was an important element … There was all the pressure, client development, billable hours … it was something that, from my side, with the two children, was more difficult.
I told myself, during my second maternity leave, that I would try to see if there was something a little closer … And word of mouth, the people who knew the company here m ‘have put in contact. There was a lawyer at the time who was leaving to do her MBA … So I was in the right place at the right time, as they say!
Did that give you more flexibility, then?
Yes … We work very hard. But we can often leave at more regular hours, compared to life in large offices, where, often, if there is a transaction, we know when we are coming back, but we do not necessarily know when we are going out!
On our side, we often go out! It often happens that we continue to work later in the evening, but … If we have to go and get the children, we will get the children! This is normal and it is understood. What is sought is to arrive at the result. The files have to come out, the agreements have to come out, often quickly … But it’s not the same kind of pressure.
So yes, more flexibility… and having “one client” is interesting. Because it allows you to deepen, we become experts in the company, we know what the goals are, what the vision is. So it makes it possible to go and negotiate the agreements with that in mind … which means that we succeed in finding what is important to us.
When you started your law studies, was it a possibility for you to be a corporate lawyer?
In fact, in college, no … I would say I mostly saw myself in a big office. I was leaning towards corporate law. During my internship – at the time it was Byers Casgrain, who became Fraser Milner Casgrain, and now it’s Dentons – I had the chance to go to trial. We were doing a litigation and commercial rotation … and I had the chance to sue with a partner, and I fell in love with litigation! So, I did about a year and a half of litigation …
What I had less realized at that time was that it had been ten years since the file had been started, and I was coming to the end of the file, to the part really the fun (laughs)!
But the previous ten years, for me, it clicked less. So after a year and a half, I transferred to corporate law, real estate, mainly. And I found myself in my place.
You don’t necessarily talk a lot about being a corporate lawyer at university, do you?
Not a lot. And that’s not necessarily valued. Of course, it is the large office that is put forward.
For young lawyers who are just starting out, it is very interesting to be in a company, it allows first of all to know your client, to know what is important for him, to develop an expertise towards his client. And in real estate law, in construction law, it touches a lot of things. So we see several very concrete elements.
For example, due diligence checks, we check, we read soil tests, we work with surveyors, architects … it is of course not our responsibility to check the plans … But As we look at them and understand more and more about these things, it leads to a diversification of our activities, which also makes things very interesting.
Yes, we practice law, but there is the very concrete aspect linked to construction, to a building, which means that it allows us to have an influence on the negotiation of the lease, for example, or the construction contract. This element is fun! Versus, when you’re in a large office, you focus a lot on documents, but the whole more concrete aspect, sometimes, is a little less present.
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