![]() Today we have the pleasure of (virtually) meeting and learning from Alisia Grenville: Lawyer, compliance officer, board member, fashion designer, and author. Originally from Montreal, now living in Switzerland, this woman is ah-mah-zing: 1. Tell me a little about your practice or business. I help companies build high performing teams by making them examine and reconsider their corporate cultures and determine that they can shift the way they do business by getting people to shift their behavior. After years of building compliance programs for many companies in several different industries, I knew something was missing in the compliance program and what makes it “effective” or an “activist” program. There has been too much of a focus on framework and metrics like prevention, detection and monitoring. Anytime one spoke about ethics and behavior, it sounded soft and unmeasurable. Now I have gracefully combined compliance and ethics by focusing on transforming corporate cultures. When I focus on behavior, I get to speak about compliance and ethics from a humanistic perspective. 2. Why did you go to law school? Law school was an after-thought. I never wanted nor thought about becoming a lawyer. However, when I graduated and started working, without a title in the corporate arena, I soon recognized that I would not be able to get the commercial experience, opportunities nor salary I was looking for. I quickly saw all my friends with law degrees and those who were in law school had big jobs at big firms and it seemed as though their lives had purpose because they were never available to meet and were working downtown in big buildings on the 36th floor of some tower. I was looking for purpose and I thought becoming a lawyer would give me some. That said, I knew I wanted to live in Europe and so I applied to law schools outside of Canada and went to law school in England. For me law school’s purpose was to open up possibilities that I could not see looking through my narrowly framed myopic view master. I have grown since then. Wisdom takes time. 3. How did you get to where you are today? Design? Chance? Both? I do not believe in chance; I believe in destiny. By following my love of languages, I was able to incorporate my legal knowledge into the world I wanted to create by having the two worlds harmonize. Doing only one, each separately, would never have been enough. By combining them and with each of these core strengths leaning on each other, I have been able to compose my own professional melodic symphony. I live in Switzerland, in the French speaking Canton of Vaud. I grew up in Montreal, Quebec and so being in a bilingual environment is both natural and essential to my very essence. I help companies design new ways of seeing operational greatness by embracing cultural, ethics and compliance through enhanced behavioral structures. I don’t talk about compliance and ethics, I have them live it. 4. What is your most significant achievement? What are you proud of? I am proud that I stopped talking about being a part of a management team of someone else’s company to becoming the management team and CEO, not only of my life, but of my own company and brands. I started ADG Compliance and Consulting upon return from the Middle East with my family. But because I never believe in putting all my eggs in one basket, I started a fashion brand to uplift and support girls. My daughter, Maren, is the namesake for MaRen Designs. (www.marendesigns.com) My mom’s personal denial of breast cancer and her story is what gave me the courage to want to change the way girls and young adolescents see and value themselves. That also led to my children’s picture book series, Sela Blue. (www.selablue.com). I love being able to have children see the world differently: with new friends to make and new worlds to imagine! 5. What are some key challenges, and more importantly, opportunities for women in law? Erin, I will not focus on challenges because challenges are a matter of perspective and our own mind creates what it perceives to be “challenges”. Do you know that the Simplified Chinese for challenge is composed of two characters meaning “danger” and “opportunity”? Now don’t get me wrong, in the current corporate male dominated set-up, women globally in law seem not to be able to ascend nor rise through the ranks in the traditional law firm structure as they should (when we know that 60-65% of law school graduates are women, why do they only make up less than 10% of partnerships in firms around the world?) and, thus, feel that to be “successful”, they have to take on male dominate character traits. I say, please call “bs” and don’t follow the model. The only reason women feel confined to follow that male dominated model is because we don’t believe that success can look different, have and or can be measured by different metrics. The key challenge, therefore, is to break free from the classic definition of the success narrative and what makes a successful legal career by espousing and promoting only one model. I, personally, made opportunities for myself and did not follow any path because I did not believe that I had to. To some, did I step “dangerously”? Absolutely! But I saw each step, even though some may have gone wrong, as potential opportunities. And when you are not confined to or by a belief paradigm, then you don’t know if “you are making a mistake” or are in a “crisis” because what you are doing is natural, authentic and have no set determined outcome that you must reach to be considered “successful”. You define your success! And well, because I did not believe nor wish to be defined by those metrics, I made-up my career as I went along and followed my own path. Rightly or wrongly, it was mine. When I got to Europe, still in private practice, I was not a fit for many firms; and they did not hesitate to tell me that because they did not know what I had done (it did not make sense to them) and I looked “suspicious” to most. That said, years later, I landed my first in-house job not because of what I knew, but because of what I was willing to learn. This changed my legal trajectory because that is how I got hooked on Ethics, Culture and Compliance. 6. What advice would you give a woman starting her legal career? Don’t box yourself in! There are so many opportunities on the legal spectrum. Actually, my advice, if I could speak to my 28 year-old self, would be to not follow the traditional path. Of course, if partnership is your ultimate goal, then I guess so. But hopefully, in this age of transparency and knowing how customized and tailored one’s professional career can be, don’t box yourself in and don’t settle for “this is it” or “this is as good as it gets”. This degree opens so many doors and avenues on the planet when you believe there is abundance and are not afraid nor act in fear, thinking you have to take the first job that comes your way because no other job may come by you, then you are seeing your world through a narrow lens and usually are being guided by your very narrow minded thoughts. And believing what you think may be the first problem in your analysis and self-awareness. So, engage with your degree in areas of your interest. If you love movies or entertainment, then look into how you can work on licensing of products or distribution of film or television programming. In my case, I studied languages and speak four fluently and have lived in eight different countries. I was able to leverage my law degree by applying to international companies around the world and because of my love of languages, languages skills and those who speak them, people, I did not limit my professional scope to only English-speaking countries. It all seemed to come together for me when I was being recruited for my role as Chief Compliance Officer with a major Europe company located in Geneva, STMicroelectronics. The CEO was Italian, to whom I reported, and the COO was French. The first lunch we had together during my interview I had both of them in the company’s private corporate dining room, each peppering me with questions in both Italian and French simultaneously. Law did not even matter; it was about the other skills and attributes that I could bring to the business: I was open, vulnerable and even though none of those languages are my mother tongues, I put myself out there. Now, they thought, if she can do that, what else can and will she bring to us talent wise. So, make sure you incorporate your legal knowledge into something that makes sense for you. If I had done so earlier, I would have definitely chosen to go into entertainment and / or journalism and I would have been a talk show hostess today or news anchor! Wonderful mix for legal experts. But no regrets from my side though. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wow. What a fun path for a legal career. Thank you Alisia for taking the time out of your busy schedule to participate in this series. I started this blog series because I was tired of hearing about women leaving law and wanted to hear about women leading in law. The "Women Leading in Law" series focuses on good news stories and highlights amazing women succeeding in the legal profession. Each post includes the profiled lawyer's answers to six questions. Prepare to be inspired! ICYMI - previous posts profiled the following amazing lawyers: Frances Wood, Maggie Wente, Anita Szigeti, Neha Chugh, Christy Allen & Nancy Houle, Suzie Seo, Kim Gale, Alexi Wood, Melissa McBain, Erin Best, Gillian Hnatiw, Melanie Sharman Rowand, Meg Chinelo Egbunonu, Lisa Jean Helps, Nathalie Godbout Q.C., Laurie Livingstone, Renatta Austin, Janis Criger, May Cheng, Nicole Chrolavicius, Charlene Theodore, Dyanoosh Youssefi, Shannon Salter, Bindu Cudjoe, Elliot Spears, Jessica Prince, Anu K. Sandhu, Claire Hatcher, Esi Codjoe, Kate Dewhirst, Jennifer Taylor, Rebecca Durcan, Atrisha Lewis, Vandana Sood, Kathryn Manning, Kim Hawkins, Kyla Lee, and Eva Chan.
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![]() Welcome back to the Women Leading in Law blog series. Today's post profiles Frances (Frankie) Wood. I have had the pleasure of meeting and volunteering with Frankie at the OBA. She brings joy to any room that she is in. Read on for some great advice: 1. Tell me a little about your practice or business. Wood Gold is one of Peel Region’s largest family law boutique firms, with offices in Mississauga and Brampton. We started our firm in 2008 with a goal of creating a firm that worked for our own needs – both Jennifer and I had small children at the time and we wanted to create a firm in which we could provide excellent legal services and also have the family lives that we wanted for ourselves. Since our inception, while our primary focus has been on providing top notch services to our clients, we have equally diligently fostered an environment in which individual lawyers and staff can thrive in their own way, guided by their own respective goals and ambitions. 2. Why did you go to law school? I first went to law school at the University of Edinburgh. I had every intention of staying in Scotland and making a life there, but ultimately I chose to return to Canada. I then studied for 2 years at the University of New Brunswick in beautiful Fredericton before returning to Toronto for articles. 3. How did you get to where you are today? Design? Chance? Both? A little of both. I certainly never intended to practice family law. I had planned to practice civil litigation in downtown Toronto. When my firm collapsed a year and a half after I was called to the bar, I found myself for the first time in my life actually wondering what I wanted to be when I grew up. While I tried to figure that out, I joined a colleague who was practicing family law in Mississauga. 20 years later, I am still practicing family law in Mississauga, although I still live in Toronto. That was the accidental part. Between 2000 and 2008 I practiced with various colleagues, but without ever really finding my place. Jennifer Gold and I used to chat, in the way one does, and say “one day we should start our own firm, set it up the way we want.” One day in the winter of 2008 she called me and said “We’re starting our own firm.” I started to respond with the usual “that’s a great idea”, when she interrupted me. “No, we are doing it. I am giving notice today. We have 30 days to set it up.” The next 30 days were a whirlwind. We had no idea how to run our own business, we had to find a location, set up the bank accounts, the software, buy equipment, design a website… everything! My daughter was 9 months old at the time and Jennifer’s was 2. We have each had a second child along the way. It was crazy, somewhat reckless, but also incredibly liberating. From the beginning, we deliberately crafted a firm which honoured every colleague’s unique needs, goals and ambitions. 12 years on, I still consider myself incredibly fortunate to be practicing law with Jennifer and our amazing team. 4. What is your most significant achievement? What are you proud of? I have done a lot of things in my 20+ years of practice that I am proud of. I have been President of the Peel Law Association, an executive member of CDLPA (now FOLA), and Co-Chair of LibraryCo. In each of those roles one of my key platforms was the preservation of the county libraries across the province and I am extremely proud of the work that we did on that front. I currently have the privilege of sitting as Vice-Chair of the Family Law Section of the OBA and one of the central west representatives to OBA Council. I am also a member of the OBA Women’s Law Forum. Each year brings its own opportunities and challenges; the OBA does an amazing amount of work on behalf of lawyers across the province and in the promotion of diversity, inclusion and access to justice and being a part of that is incredibly enriching. But what I am most proud of us is the firm that Jennifer and I have put together. We currently have 9 associates and 1 LPP candidate. Jennifer and I have deliberately created a firm that honours and promotes diversity & inclusion both for team members but also in how we practice law. While creating a viable business, we have also been able to actively promote access to justice, provide services to some of the most vulnerable residents in our jurisdiction, all while fostering an environment in which every member of our team can achieve their own respective goals. 5. What are some key challenges as well as opportunities for women in law? I think one of biggest challenges is that we are taught from an early stage to define success according to the same standards of success that have been established my previous generation of (mostly) white, male lawyers. While the world has changed in many ways, measures of success – billable hours, income, making partner, the corner office – for the most part, have not. Women lawyers are led to believe that if we just work hard enough, we can “have it all.” But of course, until there are 48 hours in a day, that is actually impossible. So, we are set up to fail. Some years ago, I was asked at an event about how women could be successful in law. The audience were all students or young lawyers. I told them that the first step in achieving success is to define what success means to you. Not what it means to your family, your friends or your colleagues. Not what you have been trained to think it means. But really sit down with your thoughts, think about your life, what you really want, and create your own definition of success. And then go and get it. And that is why I think that our biggest challenge is also our biggest opportunity. We have the chance to redefine what success means and to create work environments in which we can each pursue our own respective visions of success. 6. What advice would you give a woman starting her legal career? See above. Also, don’t let anyone ever make you feel that you do not deserve to be exactly where you are. For too many years of my life, I was inexplicably drawn to men who mistreated me, both personally and professionally. I have worked in my share of abusive environments – the details are irrelevant now – believing that if I were strong enough I could handle it and that if I was upset it was because I wasn’t tough enough. I now have wonderful personal and professional relationships. My advice to any woman starting her legal career is to define her own success and never accept poor treatment from anyone. ------------------------------------------------------------ Such great advice. There are many lawyers out there working in an area of law or for a law firm that is not a good fit for them (or is an abusive place), thinking that if they just "toughen up" it will get easier or they are "weak" if they can't "make it" in that environment. This is such backwards thinking, but an easy emotional trap to fall into. Thank you Frankie for reminding us to define our OWN success and go after it. I started this blog series because I was tired of hearing about women leaving law and wanted to hear about women leading in law. The "Women Leading in Law" series focuses on good news stories and highlights amazing women succeeding in the legal profession. Each post includes the profiled lawyer's answers to six questions. Prepare to be inspired! ICYMI - previous posts profiled the following amazing lawyers: Maggie Wente, Anita Szigeti, Neha Chugh, Christy Allen & Nancy Houle, Suzie Seo, Kim Gale, Alexi Wood, Melissa McBain, Erin Best, Gillian Hnatiw, Melanie Sharman Rowand, Meg Chinelo Egbunonu, Lisa Jean Helps, Nathalie Godbout Q.C., Laurie Livingstone, Renatta Austin, Janis Criger, May Cheng, Nicole Chrolavicius, Charlene Theodore, Dyanoosh Youssefi, Shannon Salter, Bindu Cudjoe, Elliot Spears, Jessica Prince, Anu K. Sandhu, Claire Hatcher, Esi Codjoe, Kate Dewhirst, Jennifer Taylor, Rebecca Durcan, Atrisha Lewis, Vandana Sood, Kathryn Manning, Kim Hawkins, Kyla Lee, and Eva Chan. ![]() Today's profile features lawyer Maggie Wente. Several people reached out to suggest that Maggie be profiled and I agreed wholeheartedly. (If you are on Twitter, you should definitely be following her too!) 1. Tell me a little about your practice or business. I have a diverse practice that serves First Nations clients across Canada, although I primarily work in Newfoundland and Labrador and in Ontario. My firm, OKT LLP is a full service firm for First Nations clients. My practice is reasonably evenly split between litigation about equality rights (mostly concerning children’s rights and access to equal government services) and section 35 rights (aboriginal rights) and solicitor’s work, primarily in the area of First Nations governance. That usually means assisting First Nations in running their governments, from their HR matters, their agreements with other governments, their provision of social services, their lands management, and their duties and obligations as a government. I also work with a number of First Nations not for profit organizations that service urban Indigenous communities. I travel a lot – last year I took about 35 work trips all over the country. 2. Why did you go to law school? I am one of those people who always said she wanted to be a lawyer, even though I never knew a lawyer as a child (my parents didn’t even go to University). My mother is Anishinaabe and First Nations issues have long been my passion, despite the fact that I haven’t ever lived at my First Nation. My grandmother went to residential school. I knew there were injustices and I have always wanted to address injustice, especially the injustice I saw within my own family. When I was in my undergraduate degree (philosophy at McGill) there were periods that I didn’t want to be a lawyer – it seemed very establishment and I viewed myself as very anti-establishment. I was torn between law school and social work school – and then I chose both, by going to U of T’s law and social work combined program. I wanted to change the world – and I still do. 3. How did you get to where you are today? Design? Chance? Both? Definitely both, with a big dose of mentorship and people taking a chance on me. I didn’t intend to practice when I went to school and always thought I would do social work. At the time, tuition was low enough that that was an option. But as I went through both degrees I found myself thinking more and more that law was a place you could change the unfair laws and policies, and social work wasn’t very anti-establishment at all. Although “Aboriginal law” was a thing then, there wasn’t nearly the kind of opportunity there is now. It was obscure, and job prospects were few. I knew it would be hard to find a spot, and so I focused on another area of social justice that I loved – labour law. I articled at Cavalluzzo and worked for a union briefly after my articles. Shortly after I started working for the union, OKT LLP posted for an associate, which was absolutely my dream job. I felt bad about leaving the union so soon, but when I was offered a job I couldn’t turn it down. OKT was so tiny then – we were only 7 lawyers including me. It was a big change and what they don’t tell you about “Aboriginal law” is that you don’t really spend all your time thinking about section 35 of the Constitution. You spend much more of your time thinking about…well, everything else – property law, contract law, trust law, tax law, administrative law, environmental law, and so on. My law school Aboriginal law course didn’t really touch at all on the things I was doing day to do at the firm. But I had amazing patient mentors who knew so much, I was eager, my fellow associates were great, and I learned a lot in those first few years (and still do today). 4. What is your most significant achievement? What are you proud of? I often tell prospective associates or students that if you want to practice in Aboriginal rights law, you have to get real comfortable with losing. It seems like there are lots of court victories in Aboriginal rights – but those cases aren’t litigated every day. Day to day, your clients are still struggling to meet their basic needs and vindicate what seems like obvious rights. It sometimes feels like you are writing the same letter every month for 5 years trying to achieve a gain for them. Undoubtedly my biggest achievement has been my work on the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society v. Canada case – which is about inequality of funding for child welfare services provided to First Nations children. I represent Chiefs of Ontario at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal as interveners, and have done since the remedies stage of the hearing, which is ongoing. In seeking remedies, COO was successful in getting some programs and services funded by Canada at the actual cost of providing the service. One of these is the “Band Representative” program which allows a representative of the First Nation to present the Nation’s perspective at all stages of a child’s child welfare involvement. That program hadn’t been funded for years and now that First Nations are accessing funding, we have seen amazing results. The research says that First Nations children losing connection with their communities, land, language, culture and kin in the child welfare system leads to terrible outcomes. The Band Representative program seeks to preserve those connections and keep children as close to community as possible. We have seen programs make transformative changes in young people’s lives and it has made me so happy to be a part of this work. First Nations have accessed tens of millions of dollars for this program since 2018. And when can anyone ever say they won unlimited money for a client? I can never top this one. 5. What are some key challenges, and more importantly, opportunities for women in law? A challenge which I surprisingly still face despite the considerable greying of my hair is just the everyday sexism I have to put up with from opposing counsel, some of whom aren’t even senior to me. Lately, even, I have been called kiddo, missy, been mimicked in court in a sing-songy voice, and am told how many years men have been practicing as a way to exert authority. This happens so often I actually have a chart on my office door where I and the women lawyers in my firm keep track. When I was more junior it did what it actually was intended to do – made me feel like crap and cowed me. Now that I am much older and much more confident I routinely just tell people they are being sexist jerks or and tell them to stop and return to speak to me when they can do it respectfully– which is not a popular response. That’s ok though, I’m not here to make friends, and certainly not with sexist jerks. Opportunities? Well I think there is so much opportunity for women to use all the skills in our practices that we are conditioned to have as women. Things like listening well and being empathetic and attentive and caring are incredibly useful because it makes us better at serving our clients and at reading opposing parties. And lately, I see women starting their small and innovative firms in ways that clients are really responding to and so in terms of coming out of last century’s business model, it seems to me that women are leading the way there, which is borne often out of a desire to get out of the traditional male dominated practice models that serve men’s needs, interests, and schedules. 6. What advice would you give a woman starting her legal career? Firstly, you can’t expect that it is any different than it is. Firms are firms and ultimately businesses that are resistant to change and you aren’t going to singlehandedly change law firms and what they demand from people. There is a certain amount of acceptance that is required if being in traditional private practice is what you want to do. Secondly, rely on your friends and mentors. My law school friends and lawyer friends I have met along the way are so important to me. You never know when you might need to ask a question or a favour or just lean on someone for support. Anyone who knows me knows that I have hundreds of friends and I wouldn’t have it any other way. No obligation to go that far in terms of numbers but it’s important to remember that you’re not alone and people have done this before you. Stay in touch. Thirdly, everyone has imposter syndrome to some degree (or at least every woman I know) and in the first years of practice it is totally normal to feel underwater. Just remembering that can be helpful in itself. But remember that it’s not that you aren’t good enough. Don’t let imposter syndrome hold you back, and figure out ways to think differently about yourself and your work. As the saying goes, act like someone with the confidence of a mediocre white man. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I love Maggie's last line and must remind myself of this from time to time. Thank you Maggie for taking the time to participate and share your wisdom. I started this blog series because I was tired of hearing about women leaving law and wanted to hear about women leading in law. The "Women Leading in Law" series focuses on good news stories and highlights amazing women succeeding in the legal profession. Each post includes the profiled lawyer's answers to six questions. Prepare to be inspired! ICYMI - previous posts profiled the following amazing lawyers: Anita Szigeti, Neha Chugh, Christy Allen & Nancy Houle, Suzie Seo, Kim Gale, Alexi Wood, Melissa McBain, Erin Best, Gillian Hnatiw, Melanie Sharman Rowand, Meg Chinelo Egbunonu, Lisa Jean Helps, Nathalie Godbout Q.C., Laurie Livingstone, Renatta Austin, Janis Criger, May Cheng, Nicole Chrolavicius, Charlene Theodore, Dyanoosh Youssefi, Shannon Salter, Bindu Cudjoe, Elliot Spears, Jessica Prince, Anu K. Sandhu, Claire Hatcher, Esi Codjoe, Kate Dewhirst, Jennifer Taylor, Rebecca Durcan, Atrisha Lewis, Vandana Sood, Kathryn Manning, Kim Hawkins, Kyla Lee, and Eva Chan. ![]() I'm so glad I restarted this series. The profiles are rolling in and I am learning so much already! This post features Anita Szigeti and her practice in a really interesting area of law: mental health law. 1. Tell me a little about your practice or business. My firm is called Anita Szigeti Advocates (“ASA”!). We are an all woman firm. I have a junior associate lawyer, an articling student and a legal assistant. Our firm is also diverse and has been for many years devoted to all aspects of diversity, including employing racialized young lawyers and internationally trained lawyers. All our work is in the area of mental health law. Everything we do is related to mental health issues. There are two broad branches: mental disorder law in criminal justice and mental health issues in relation to civil commitment or forced treatment. We are true barristers in that all our work is litigation and we are in hearings pretty well every day and often all day. We appear before administrative tribunals addressing liberty issues. There are two of these: (1) The Ontario Review Board that considers the situation of forensic accused persons who are unfit to stand trial or have been found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder for their criminal charges; and (2) the Consent and Capacity Board which deals with involuntary civil commitment, treatment capacity, long term care placement, capacity to manage property and related issues. We do appeals from both tribunals so we spend some time in the Superior Court of Justice and I spend a lot of time on my feet arguing cases in the Court of Appeal for Ontario. I have also appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada ten times. The other thing we do is act for intervener groups in all kinds of settings, including public interest intervention at Coroner’s Inquests. These are lengthy death inquiries with a jury who get to ask questions throughout! I have done probably 20 or more Inquests, including some that went on for many months. They fall into two broad categories: inquests into the deaths of individuals who are killed during their interaction with police and inquests into institutional deaths, often by suicide or medication adverse consequences or overdose. 2. Why did you go to law school? I wish I had a good answer here. I don’t. I had intended to become a doctor, like my mother. This was the plan since I was a little kid. However after two years of undergrad, I got very sick and nearly died. I ended up in hospital for the better part of a year having three major operations. I was not allowed to eat or drink during this time and I literally had nothing to do. So my then boyfriend gave me a practice LSAT book and I just kept doing those tests. At the end of the year, on almost a lark, I wrote the LSAT and all that practice paid dividends; I didn’t miss a single question. This meant I got accepted to the U of T law school and even got a small scholarship. There were no lawyers in my family and I had no idea what one did. However, I didn’t want to become a doctor after being so sick, so I figured I’d go to law school and find out what that was all about. Never really intended to practise, just pass some time. I was 20 when I started law school. The ultimate irony here, of course, is my law practice now takes me into hospitals every day for hearings. 3. How did you get to where you are today? Design? Chance? Both? I fell into the practice of mental health law completely fortuitously. I began initially as a Hungarian speaking lawyer (I am perfectly bilingual and that’s rare in our profession) servicing the ex-pat community doing Wills and Real Estate and Family Law. It was a disaster. I was truly terrible at the solicitor’s work and was slowly starving to death, barely making rent. I was also unhappy. But I had no idea how to get out or what to do. I was completely on my own, isolated from the whole profession, before social media! One day a friend from law school who was working as a Patient Advocate inside what is now CAMH on Queen Street suggested I represent a patient at a Consent and Capacity Board Hearing. I was resistant but he was persistent. The very first hearing I had the client was involuntarily detained, but so far as I could tell had not done anything wrong. She was ill but on what basis was she effectively incarcerated? I could not make sense of any of it. I did my first hearing advocating for her release and never looked back. I instantly felt like this was what I was meant to do. Eventually, in hind-sight, a lot of my earlier life-experiences definitely had prepared me for exactly this kind of work. I had just never thought it was an area of law at all and wasn’t able to see the synergies there. However, I was deliriously happy representing vulnerable detained people and taking on the psychiatric profession, standing up tall for the client, levelling the power-imbalance in the room. Within that year I opened probably about a hundred such files. Over the next 10 years I opened 250-300 of these types of files each year. At some point I began representing people in related proceedings but where those with mental health issues came in to systems through criminal justice. I think this was because many of my regular clients were becoming criminalized. I was even more hooked by defence work. I fell in love with criminal defence lawyers as a group, because they are big-hearted, sharp-tongued and have the darkest humour. I started actively participating in the Criminal Lawyers’ Association (CLA), was elected to its governing body and continued leading various other volunteer organizations and groups. Somewhere in this journey, I realized I had become known for the work I did and was what I like to call a ‘big fish in a very small pond.” That suited me. I am not someone who likes to know a bit about a lot of things. I do like being the best at one thing, even if that thing is so small, most people have no idea what it is. It is my thing. 4. What is your most significant achievement? What are you proud of? I suppose the logical answer would be a case I won in 2003 where I had been appointed amicus curiae in the Supreme Court. The case, known as Starson v Swayze, became a landmark decision and some people say changed the test for capacity to make treatment decisions. But that would not be my answer, though it is certainly a career highlight and winning is sweet. Oddly, if we are talking about professional highlights, I am most proud of the work I did on cases that were lost, and indeed lost brutally badly at times. I can think of two quick examples. In 1999 I was counsel to the then Queen Street Patients’ Council and the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre who wanted jointly to intervene in the Inquest into the death of Cinderella Allalouf, the sole female patient on a medium secure forensic unit at Queen Street (now CAMH) who got pregnant on that unit and died in childbirth. The Coroner denied the coalition group standing. We had about 48 hours to put together materials to bring a judicial review to Divisional Court. I remember we were working with the clients all night, then there was a huge snowstorm at the end of April and we had to run through it to serve people outside the Courthouse. My written and oral submissions were among the best in my career. I was in that ‘flow’ state Olympic athletes describe. We lost so bad. Precedent setting case law was made against coalitions of this nature. It was a disaster. I nonetheless remember it as some of the best work I have ever done and among the most meaningful. I have a similar recollection of representing an intervener group in the Supreme Court in a case called CLA v AG in 2012. I did my best work on my feet for those 15 minutes. I left it all in the Courtroom after re-writing my argument IN court based on what was going on around me. Huge loss. Disaster for the defence bar. Have never even read the Judgment. But when I remember how I felt arguing the case, how certain I was that the argument I was making was the right one and how important the case was to the administration of justice, I know I could not have done more. That’s what I am most proud of. Moments like that. Cases where I am completely committed and giving it my all to try to achieve justice for people who otherwise have no voice. It’s a privilege. 5. What are some key challenges, and more importantly, opportunities for women in law? I think the good news is that opportunities outweigh the challenges. There definitely are challenges, however. To this day, despite that I am 28 years at the bar, I get belittled and cut off and yelled at, dismissed and abused usually by people in positions of authority who are clearly threatened by forceful advocacy in front of them. I suspect, but can never know of course, that being a woman is part of the reason for the shabby treatment. I do not imagine, but also cannot know for sure, that men in my place experience the same level of disruption while just doing their jobs. Certainly I do not see men who are lawyers in my proceedings being shouted down like I so often am. This is very difficult. It is an extreme challenge because our civility rules really do not permit us to speak our minds in such situations so one has to be very careful to maintain respect for the tribunal and civility at all cost. This requires much tongue biting. Now for the good news: there is a great lot of room for women to become decision-makers. There is an urgent and desperate need for women to become tribunal adjudicators and in Ontario there are 150 or more such agencies. Many are still largely staffed by men, older and white men at that. There is so much space for women to occupy. In addition, of course, to applying to be appointed to the Bench, tribunal adjudication and also politics are great places to use a law degree effectively. The administration of justice benefits from increasing numbers of women in decision-making positions. I would encourage any woman who has any desire to be on that side of the equation to do it. In my experience women make sensible compassionate decisions. Women make fabulous leaders. We should aim to be in positions of power and agents for change at the highest levels. We should and must become leaders. We should not be satisfied to be part of the "team". This goes for various volunteer organizations as well. The CLA is a good example. It has had but a couple of Presidents who were women. While more women are on the Board, they can’t seem to rise straight to the top. That’s unfortunate and real change needs to happen. This means women actively seeking those positions as Chair, President, dare I say Prime Minister? 6. What advice would you give a woman starting her legal career? The main thing is exuding confidence. “Fake It till you make it” I have always found useful. Whatever you do, act like you know what you’re doing. Particularly within the law, hesitation, reluctance, uncertainty about your position all telegraph weakness and in a litigation environment, that’s fatal. The natural confidence comes from knowing your case. From working extra hard. Being more familiar with the facts and the law than anybody else in the room. Regardless of stereotypes or prejudices, competence can’t be entirely dismissed after a while. Success is within your grasp if you’re smart. The other thing is, and this takes some comfort and probably comes with experience and time, but if you can inject humour into anything, people remember that and they remember you. It is what draws people in and it is how they learn. Finally, find mentors who care about you and are generous with their time and their expertise who also care deeply and passionately about what they do. If you find someone who is prepared to take you under their wing, you will never feel totally alone, which is the scariest thing when you are starting out. The way to find your perfect mentor is identify someone you admire and offer to help her. Don’t ask her for coffee. Ask if you can write a paper for a conference she’s organizing or help her organize a CPD event for her bar or do some research or document summary for a big trial. Ask if you can help. Ask how you can help. And in the end, before you know it, you’re being helped too. Maybe you’re hired. Or you’re working together some other way and connected to the broader bar. And with any luck, you’re having fun and learning. I elaborate a lot on this in the podcast I did with Sean Robichaud as part of his “Of Counsel” series. If you feel like it, give it a listen. I am super proud of this too. ------------------ Thank you Anita for sharing with us your experiences leading in law, I learned so much! Stayed tuned for more posts and inspiring advice. The "Women Leading in Law" series focuses on good news stories and highlights amazing women succeeding in the legal profession. Each post includes the profiled lawyer's answers to six questions. Prepare to be inspired! ICYMI - previous posts profiled the following amazing lawyers: Neha Chugh, Christy Allen & Nancy Houle, Suzie Seo, Kim Gale, Alexi Wood, Melissa McBain, Erin Best, Gillian Hnatiw, Melanie Sharman Rowand, Meg Chinelo Egbunonu, Lisa Jean Helps, Nathalie Godbout Q.C., Laurie Livingstone, Renatta Austin, Janis Criger, May Cheng, Nicole Chrolavicius, Charlene Theodore, Dyanoosh Youssefi, Shannon Salter, Bindu Cudjoe, Elliot Spears, Jessica Prince, Anu K. Sandhu, Claire Hatcher, Esi Codjoe, Kate Dewhirst, Jennifer Taylor, Rebecca Durcan, Atrisha Lewis, Vandana Sood, Kathryn Manning, Kim Hawkins, Kyla Lee, and Eva Chan. ![]() I don't know about you but I need some good news right about now. And I believe there's nothing better than reading positive stories about women kicking butt in law, so welcome back to the Women Leading in Law blog series! Sit back and enjoy lots of upcoming posts about amazing women leading in law. First up is superstar Neha Chugh! 1. Tell me a little about your practice or business I started Chugh Law on May 1, 2014 – just me, with a passion for criminal law. Marriage, circumstances, and opportunity took my practice to Cornwall, Ontario – a small town between Ottawa and Montreal. I slowly expanded to family and child protection defence. My main area of focus is criminal litigation – trials, juries, pleas, sentencing, motions, research, discoveries – that is my comfort zone. After a lot of growth, I hired two lawyers to help me out with my expanding clientele – one with criminal and one with family experience. More clerks, more lawyers were on-boarded – we are now 5 lawyers and staff. I purchased a building in October of 2017 and we were able to pay it down, pave a parking lot, and complete some renovations. Overall, the growth has been unprecedented – we are humbled. I love my job. The funny moments and the hard days are all met with camaraderie and friendship with the lawyers at Chugh Law. We are all in the same boat. Some days it feels like a luxury yacht, travelling through crystal waters to the Bahamas on a sunny afternoon. Some days it feels like a dingy escaping the Titanic. Having a team to work with makes it so much better. I also love being self-employed and the freedom of choice that it brings me. While my schedule is largely dictated by the Court, I also have the ability to massage my schedule to fit in new challenges. This past year, I began teaching at St. Lawrence College, both at the Iohahi:io campus in Akwesasne and the Cornwall campus. This was a very valuable experience and I love working and dialoguing with students, preparing them for their careers as social workers and in the business world. Chugh Law also helps out the City of Cornwall from time to time when their prosecutor has conflicts. I worked as the duty counsel in the Akwesasne Court and look forward to starting as their prosecutor when the Courts reopen. I also started a PhD in social and cultural analysis at Concordia University for the prime reason that I was hungry to read, engage, learn, write and meet other like-minded individuals. My schedule works for me, it wouldn’t work for everybody. 2. Why did you go to law school? Rebellion. I have South Asian Tiger Parents. My mother wanted me to be a lawyer the moment she started watching LA Law in the 80’s and because of her crush on Jack McCoy from Law and Order. They pushed and pushed for me to succeed, and I always pushed back, never wanting to concede to their wishes. I started with a Bachelors of Arts in Sociology and a Bachelors of Social Work from the University of Waterloo. I love the study and practice of social work and the study of community development. I was passionate about it – my parents were in the background pushing law school. The more they pushed it, the more I pushed back. I went on to do a masters degree from the University of Guelph in planning and development. Amazingly, my parents were backing off about law school. I would say “PhD” and they would say: sure honey, if that makes you happy. That made me furious: they were supporting me? As a graduate student, I started a job with the federal government in policy studying community development. I talked to my parents about joining the public service permanently. “Honey, it is a great job for a woman.” What the heck! Where did these supportive people come from? I had to prove them wrong. I wrote the LSAT, I applied to law school and I got into every school I applied to. I chose Osgoode Hall because of their commitment to social justice and their reputation in the legal community. As an ongoing rebellion to my parents, I chose to be a criminal defence lawyer and not a prosecutor like Jack McCoy. Seriously though, as the daughter of immigrants from New Delhi, India, and as a first generation Indo-Canadian, I watched as my parents worked hard to make good lives for my two younger brothers and I. I also saw their deep fear of the state and how they managed to navigate the systems for us so that we could succeed. I was challenged to find ways to help individuals, powerless against state intervention and state action, to build a strong sense of identity, community, and to have a voice against illegal or incorrect state intervention. It is such a privilege to have the trust of community members to take their cases on for them. Often, it is just about helping community members understand why the state has intervened in their lives. I see this when child protection agencies intervene with families who have limited knowledge of the system. It is also rewarding to ensure that the state is subjected to the checks and balances that we would anticipate of our state actors. In Canada, no one is above the rule of law – working with our community’s most vulnerable is a constant reminder of the immense power of the state. 3. How did you get to where you are today? Design? Chance? Both? After three years of law school, and articles in downtown Toronto with the Honourable Justice David Berg during his time as a criminal defence lawyer, I found myself in the position of being a “trailing spouse” – the spouse that follows their husband for his career. Many marriages find themselves in this conundrum. My academic husband found his first step in Ottawa, so I applied to work with Peter Dotsikas and Terry Hawtin in their Ottawa office. I was pregnant during my articles and so we moved to Ottawa in July of 2011 with an infant. I spent two years in Ottawa while my husband worked on his post-doctoral fellowship. After two years, he had two academic job offers: Winnipeg or Montreal. I chose Montreal because it was closest to Ottawa, and I had heard of a small town called Cornwall located between the two cities. My Ontario law licence and my anglophone barrier would not get me far in Quebec. Cornwall was 45 minutes from our new home in Montreal, so the commute was not bad compared to Toronto and Ottawa traffic. I was also pregnant again with baby two. I closed my eyes and let the chips fall. I started in a one room office at the bottom of the stairs in a chambers like environment in Cornwall. We are now in a 4 story chambers that I own with 5 lawyers who work for me plus staff. With the 6 month old baby in tow in 2014, I started building the practice. After almost 6 years of practice, a third baby, and my husband achieving tenure, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t still feel like that wide-eyed, exhausted girl at the bottom of the stairs wondering if I will be able to pay the next month’s rent and phone bill. The reality of the situation was a combination of design, chance and also skill. Cornwall has faced the problem, especially in the criminal defence bar, of a greying bar. I came in as an outsider with few contacts, I am a woman of colour in a relatively homogeneous bar, and I am an extrovert with a social work background. I was able to use my social work skills to work with clients, especially very vulnerable individuals, mental health, youth, victims of abuse, individuals struggling with addiction. I was able to attract other young lawyers to join the me at the firm, which I think is a positive thing for Cornwall – a rejuvenation of legal ideas and approaches and a youthful energy. 4. What is your most significant achievement? What are you proud of? I made it and the chips were stacked against me. I am a woman, a mother, a woman of colour. I am an outsider. I did what businesses want to do when the odds are in their favour. We are the biggest barrister firm in Cornwall – and it took me just six years to achieve that honour. That is a significant achievement. But even bigger than that: I did it my way. That is my most significant work achievement. Completely unrelated, in 2013 I gave birth to my daughter with no drugs. It was not a fast birth either – I had blood issues during the delivery that made me ineligible for any pain medications or epidurals. In retrospect, I can’t believe what the human body – my body - can accomplish. When I am struggling with a deadline or from exhaustion with work and kids, I remind myself of that superhero delivery and it reminds me how far I can push myself. 5. What are some key challenges, and more importantly, opportunities for women in law? Find your champion, but be very cautious about what advice you are receiving and internalizing. Some people (especially men) will love to tell you what to do, how to do it, what their opinion of you is, and how you should change in order to meet their expectations of how you, as a woman lawyer, should behave. We are trained to look for a mentor – mentorship programs abound. But approach this relationship with caution and be weary of who you receive advice from in the guise of mentorship. To present date, I am still told: you are too vocal, you are too terse, you are too nice, you are too mean, you are emotionally driven, you are cold hearted, you are unprofessional, you are selfish, you are smart, you are dumb. It still hurts to be told this, and it is hard to remind myself not to internalize it. The advice givers always seem earnest and well intentioned, but the advice is not necessarily correct. Women especially need to be very careful about how they receive and process advice. We already have so many institutional barriers, relying on incorrect advice should not be an added setback. Looking for a champion is more than looking for a mentor – a champion is someone who wants to see you succeed and will help you open up doors to achieve your goals. I found my champions at home. My husband is my champion: he has supported me and encouraged me to set up my practice and apply for positions I never dreamed I could get. He pushed me out of my comfort zone with career decisions but has provided me with the scaffolding such as childcare, access to technology, and the resource of time, so that I could succeed. 6. What advice would you give a woman starting her legal career?
--------------- Thank you Neha for your thoughtful, honest, and funny answers to these questions. They were a delight to read and thanks for participating in this series. ICYMI - previous posts profiled the following amazing lawyers: Christy Allen & Nancy Houle, Suzie Seo, Kim Gale, Alexi Wood, Melissa McBain, Erin Best, Gillian Hnatiw, Melanie Sharman Rowand, Meg Chinelo Egbunonu, Lisa Jean Helps, Nathalie Godbout Q.C., Laurie Livingstone, Renatta Austin, Janis Criger, May Cheng, Nicole Chrolavicius, Charlene Theodore, Dyanoosh Youssefi, Shannon Salter, Bindu Cudjoe, Elliot Spears, Jessica Prince, Anu K. Sandhu, Claire Hatcher, Esi Codjoe, Kate Dewhirst, Jennifer Taylor, Rebecca Durcan, Atrisha Lewis, Vandana Sood, Kathryn Manning, Kim Hawkins, Kyla Lee, and Eva Chan. |
Erin C. Cowling is a former freelance lawyer, entrepreneur, business and career consultant, speaker, writer and CEO and Founder of Flex Legal Network Inc., a network of freelance lawyers.
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