Vancouver boutique Miller Titerle was founded in 2009 by alumni from the city’s office of McCarthy Tétrault. “They wanted to act for First Nations,” observes a aboriginal law-focused peer, “and you can imagine at a firm like McCarthy’s, who has a lot of government clients and a lot of business clients, that would cause immediate conflict.” The firm has a dual-pillar structure, with a business law group as well as a First Nations group, which incorporated general commercial litigation but with a lot of work on the Indigenous law side. The firm is also uniquely structure in that all of its lawyers are shareholders. “It’s not dependent on you grinding it out for a certain number of years,” states a peer. “It was the original founders’ idea that everyone would be an independent owner.” Myles Brown, a relatively recent addition, having joined in 2021, attends to commercial litigation, working closely with the firm’s business law group. Brown has a breach-of-contract claim against Rogers Communications in Ontario regarding a provider of call center services. The firm’s client, based in Alberta, was a referral. A client addressed Brown as “excellent, a good communicator and good at strategy.”
Joelle Walker has also made a name for herself, largely in the aboriginal law community. “She is our co-counsel in a child-welfare class-action case,” testifies a peer. “She’s feisty! Miller Titerle don’t do a lot of class actions – almost none - but they are so highly regarded for their work in indigenous business development, and they have developed such a good reputation for their work that they can team with firms for class actions.” Walker is championed by a client for her “excellent judgment, conscientiousness and organization.”
