Large law firms are generally quite expensive. When an employer hires a large law firm to defend a wrongful dismissal file brought under the Simplified Rules of procedure in Ontario, they are automatically behind the eight ball.
Simplified Rules cases max out at $200,000.00 plus interest plus up to $50,000.00 in legal cost recovery.
When I am acting for a plaintiff in that scenario, I know the employer defendant is going to get annoyed with its counsel sooner rather than later, as the size of interim accounts will soon aggravate the defendant employer. They will then usually come to the settlement table.
The second thing I often see when I am sitting across the table at examinations for discovery, is that the defence law firm’s law clerk, will just have the employer’s HR staff send over the entire employee file, and that entire file will make its way into the defence affidavit of documents. What a waste of time and money having a clerk index 300 items, when only 5 or 6 documents are relevant to the file. The law clerk probably does it so she does not get admonished for missing something, but if the defence lawyer empowers her to use her best judgement on document relevance, the costs inherent to the examination for discovery process would drop substantially.
I hope this helps.