Bridges & Company lawyers took home the prestigious Readers’ Choice Award for Best Lawyers this year, in the contest hosted by the Estevan Mercury. Their reaction? To thank the community for its support. “It’s quite a humbling experience,” said Chad Jesse, one of three lawyers behind Bridges & Company.
The Estevan-based law firm specializes in transactional legal work. “We sometimes, only half jokingly, call it happy law,” Jesse said, speaking to the non-confrontational nature of their work. “Usually there are a couple of parties that have a fairly clear idea of what they want for the outcome,” he added. The bulk of their experience deals with buying and selling homes and farmland, dealing with an estate or business, and oil and gas matters. Though, that is not to say the law firm’s experience is limited to transactional legal work.
“The experience that we have is far more than our small town would indicate,” Jesse said. The patriarch of Bridges & Company, Barry Bridges, is well known throughout the community for his 40 plus years of law practice. In fact, Jesse said Barry has been recognized as one of the best lawyers in Canada in a number of areas. Their partner, Robert Nicolay, offers a breadth of experience from different law firms and from working for the Saskatchewan provincial government. “That kind of experience, you can’t buy it, you can’t rush it,” he said, “you really have to earn it,” Jesse added.
Bridges, Nicolay, and Jesse all have deep southeast Saskatchewan roots, which enables them to offer clients a unique and personal perspective on various cases. “Having that personal connection from different areas in the corner of this province goes a long way actually,” Jesse said. Mutual and personal connections encourage trust and respect. “We have a lot of trust and respect for the people we work for, and likewise, I think we try to earn the respect back from clients as well by doing a good job,” Jesse said.
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