Precedent Magazine — Spring 2022

Speak no evil The problem with complaining about work p.17

The Peloton cult How the legal profession got hooked on the world’s trendiest bike p.29

Lake effect Meet the litigator who’s an open-water swimmer p.34

The new rules of law and style Spring 2022 $9.95 precedentmagazine.com

Getting it wrong

Why are law firms still failing on diversity?

EXCLUSIVE ONLINE NETWORKING FOR LAWYERS

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Brown Mills Klinck Prezioso announces new partner Jennifer Agnew

WeirFoulds announces new partner Macdonald Allen

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Katie Archibald

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Lerners announces new partner Nicholas Cummings

Lerners announces new partner Jacob Damstra

WeirFoulds announces new partner Lisa Danay Wallace

Stikeman Elliott announces new partner Michael Decicco

Cassels announces new partner Andrew Dilts

Lerners announces new partner Brandon Duewel

WeirFoulds announces new partner Robert Eisenberg

Cassels announces new partner Jared Enns

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Bereskin & Parr announces new partner Cameron Gale

Owens Wright announces new partner Jacqueline Gasbarre

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Pierre Gemson

Cassels announces new partner Christie Gibson

Stikeman Elliott announces new partner Kevin Guenther

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Andrew Guerrisi

Stikeman Elliott announces new partner Sinziana Hennig

Cassels announces new partner Pamela Hinman

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Jordan Hulecki

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner François Joli-Coeur

Torkin Manes announces new partner Aleksandar Jovanovic

Hicks Morley announces new partner Dianne Jozefacki

Rowand announces new partner Edward Kang

Cassels announces new partner Marisa Keating

Cassels announces new partner Tayyaba Khan

WeirFoulds announces new partner Lara Kinkartz

Polley Faith announces new partner Brookelyn Kirkham

WeirFoulds announces new partner Brian Kuchar

Neinstein announces new partner Michelle Kudlats

Cassels announces new partner Jessica Kuredjian

Cassels announces new partner Emilie Lahaie

Dickinson Wright announces new partner Kathy Le

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Danielle Lewchuk

Dutton Brock announces new partner Teri Liu

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Roma Lotay

Howie, Sacks & Henry announces new partner Kaitlyn MacDonell

WeirFoulds announces new partner Megan Mah

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Ashley Maksimovic

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Sarah Makson

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Jack Maslen

Polley Faith announces new partner Andrew Max

Thomas Gold Pettingill announces new partner Chris McCormack

WeirFoulds announces new partner Debra McKenna

Lerners announces new partner Jordan McKie

Cassels announces new partner Chris McLelland

Bereskin & Parr announces new partner David Morrison

WeirFoulds announces new partner Marie-Pier Nadeau

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Henry Ngan

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Stephen Nguyen

Stikeman Elliott announces new partner Nathalie Nouvet

Hicks Morley announces new partner Carey O’Connor

Whitten & Lublin announces new partner Simone Ostrowski

Bereskin & Parr announces new partner Ainslie Parsons

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Hunter Parsons

WeirFoulds announces new partner Hayley Peglar

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Andrea Pitts

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Jennifer Ponton

Pallett Valo announces new partner Steven Pordage

Cassels announces new partner Stephanie Roberts

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Scott Robson

Paliare Roland announces new partner Dan Rosenbluth

Torkin Manes announces new partner Calogero Rumeo

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Sameena Sarangi

WeirFoulds announces new partner Jeff Scorgie

Keyser Mason Ball announces new partner Nav Shokar

Paliare Roland announces new partner Alysha Shore

Keyser Mason Ball announces new associate partner Sukhdeep S. Sidhu

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Graham Splawski

WeirFoulds announces new partner Caitlin Steven

Rowand announces new partner Kelly Stewart

Torkin Manes announces new partner Daniel Stober

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Jeff Talbot

Cassels announces new partner Mike Tallim

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McLeish Orlando announces new partner Nick Todorovic

Stikeman Elliott announces new partner Aaron Vieira

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Whitney Wakeling

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner Michelle Wilkinson

Borden Ladner Gervais announces new partner James Woods

WeirFoulds announces new partner Sarah Yun

Lenczner Slaght announces new partner Christopher Yung

To share your news, contact us at alist.support@precedentmagazine.com 416-929-4495

You’ve prepared for court, but have you prepared your court attire?

B ehi nd the s eams

How to take care of your legal wardrobe

T h e g o w n To keep your gown looking its best between trials, hang it in a cloth garment bag (avoid plastic ones that don’t breathe). Then dry-clean it at least once a year. When the robe looks faded, or its elbows and cuffs start to fray, it’s time to get fitted for a new one.

T h e c o u r T s h i r T You’ll want to clean your shirt after every court appearance. Cotton-polyester blends can be washed at home, hung to dry and lightly pressed, while 100-percent cotton shirts should go to the dry cleaner.

Trust Harcourts for high-quality court attire.

When it’s time for a refresh, we’re here to help.

Book an appointment with our tailor today at harcourts.com/legal or call us at (416) 977-4408.

T h e w a i s T c o a T Like the gown, your waistcoat should be hung up between wears and dry-cleaned annually.

Because a Harcourts waistcoat is made to last, you’ll only need to replace this piece if you go up or down a size.

On the cover Illustration by Hanna Barczyk

ILLUSTRATION BY HANNA BARCZYK

Spring 2022. Volume 16. Issue 1.

Cover story

Starting over

Despite the legal profession’s honest attempt to increase diversity and improve its workplace culture, most law firms have hardly made any progress. What has gone wrong? p.20 PRECEDENTMAGAZINE.COM

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Contents

34

Editor’s Note What can the legal profession learn from Encanto? p.11 Letters Our readers respond to our winter issue p.12 Our People We asked our contributors to tell us about an outside-of-work accomplishment that fills them with pride p.13

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Brief

Debrief

Best Practices How Warda Shazadi Meighen is helping the next generation of immigrants and refugees around the world p.15

The Insider An investigation into the legal profession’s devotion to Peloton p.29

Opinion A better way to complain about work p.17

Going In-House Inside the stunning cottage of two personal-injury lawyers who bought the property as a joint investment p.31 Secret Life This Toronto litigator braves the open water p.34

IMAGES BY (CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT): JOHNNY C.Y. LAM, STEPH MARTYNIUK, HUDSON CHRISTIE

31

WANT TO GET A HEAD START ON YOUR CPD & EDI HOURS? TLA has a variety of education programs to choose from.

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on becoming a partner at Whi en & Lublin Employment & Labour Lawyers, one of Canada’s premier workplace law firms.

SPRING 2022. VOLUME 16. ISSUE 1.

PUBLISHER & EDITOR

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS & ILLUSTRATORS

Melissa Kluger SENIOR EDITOR

Daniel Fish MARKETING COORDINATOR

Liana Ramos ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

Maureen Barnes

Hanna Barczyk Hudson Christie Johnny C.Y. Lam Steph Martyniuk Lauren Tamaki IT CONSULTANT

MacMedics.ca

ART DIRECTION

Brian Morgan Rachel Wine

DIGITAL IMAGING SPECIALIST

ACCOUNTING

Paul Jerinkitsch Imaging

Paul Cass

FACT-CHECKERS

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Erin Cowling Jeremy Freed Danielle Groen Beth Hitchcock Luc Rinaldi Leah Rumack

Amy van den Berg Catherine Dowling PROOFREADERS

Lazarus James Jennifer Marston Anna Maxymiw Sarah Munn

Legal innovation

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The only place you’ll find both:

precedentmagazine.com

Editor’s Note

Take two The powerful lesson behind Encanto’s chart-topping success I’m kind of obsessed with Encanto. The new Disney film with music by Lin-Manuel

PHOTO BY IAN PATTERSON

Miranda and gorgeous animation has won me over. Any chance I get, I’ll happily tell friends and family about how effectively the movie explores themes like intergenerational trauma and the complexity of sibling relationships. Although the film is about a family in Colombia, it resonates with me a lot.

And of course, I’m not the only one. Even if you haven’t seen Encanto, you’ve probably heard of its many accolades. The film reached number one at the box office and one of its original songs made it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Not to mention the adoring fans on TikTok. In past films, Disney has tried to capture diverse cultures on screen. But most of its efforts have fallen short, often relying on stereotypes. Encanto, however, has won praise for accurately capturing the lives and struggles of a Colombian family.

This was no fluke. In 2018, Miranda and the directors travelled to Colombia on a research trip to better understand the local culture. If someone was going to eat soup in the movie, the directors wanted to be sure it was a soup that they saw someone eating on their trip. To get the dance sequences just right, they filmed real Colombian dancers. The music was made with traditional Colombian instruments and composed to reflect the country’s range of musical styles. Back at home, they relied on a pre-existing group of Latinx Disney animators, who offered their own experiences and insights to help make sure the film rang true. That extra care resulted in both a beautiful movie and a successful one.

I kept rewatching Encanto while we were working on the cover story of this issue of Precedent (“Back to the drawing board,” p.20). In the article, writer Luc Rinaldi takes a deep look at the legal profession’s efforts to advance diversity over the past decade. The conclusion? Well, we haven’t come very far. Consultants have consulted, policies have been drafted and unconscious bias has become part of our lexicon. But in the end, the upper echelons of private practice still look a lot like they did 10 years ago. Meanwhile, lawyers continue to confront subtle acts of ­exclusion at work.

If law wants to make more progress, it can take inspiration from Encanto.

Remember that Disney hardly has a perfect record on diversity. But it kept trying, and that repeated effort eventually led to something amazing. In the face of weak results, law ought to show the same dedication. Although we haven’t come as far as we expected, I hope that firms will continue to strive to find what works and what makes them better. Patience, understanding and a genuine investment in diversity will help our profession achieve its own sort of box-office success.

Are you making law better?

As we roll into the spring, we’re kicking off our annual search for the next winners of the Precedent Innovation Awards. We’re on the lookout for legal trailblazers who have found creative solutions to the thorniest problems in the legal world. If you’ve implemented an original initiative that improves the profession, tell us about it.

To submit an application, head on over to precedentmagazine.com/innovationawards.

The deadline to apply is Wednesday, May 4, 2022.

We will feature the winners in our winter issue.

Melissa Kluger Publisher & Editor melissa@precedentmagazine.com @melissakluger

PRECEDENTMAGAZINE.COM

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Letters

Your CPD. From your legal community.

AN INSPIRATION

In our winter issue, we published the latest edition of the Precedent ­Innovation Awards. When that story dropped, one winner in particular sparked an ­outpouring of praise from our readers. Here’s what some of you had to say.

I loved learning about the winners of the 2021 Precedent Innovation Awards. It was especially thrilling to read about the go-­ getters who created the Community Justice Collective, a social-justice, pro bono practice in Toronto. Driving progressive social change depends on the ability of vulnerable and disempowered groups to fight back against governments, the criminal justice system and corporate institutions. It’s no easy feat to create something from scratch, and the lawyers who went out on a limb deserve the support of the legal community.

I was inspired to make a donation!

See our Spring programs at store.lso.ca

Camille Labchuk Executive director, Animal Justice

I was unsurprised to read that the ­Community Justice Collective was among the recipients of this year’s Precedent ­Innovation Awards. The group’s approach to social justice is unique to Ontario’s legal industry and undoubtedly game changing.

The lawyers behind the project are part of a societal shift that seeks better living conditions for working-class families and relief from state, police and economic oppression.

Their ideas are truly innovative and will surely be replicated.

Samuel Mason Staff lawyer, Parkdale Community Legal Services

@LSOCPD Law Society of Ontario CPD

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It is a huge inspiration to see the leadership of the Community Justice Collective properly recognized. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the group on the ground at protests, ensuring people’s rights are respected. I’ve also worked with them in

more traditional legal realms, like drafting, client management and devising legal ­strategy in response to violent encampment clearings that target homeless people. I was delighted to see their principled and cuttingedge work on display in Precedent. In these often-dark days, thanks for providing some light.

David Shellnutt Managing partner, The Biking Lawyer LLP

It was a pleasure to read about the ­Community Justice Collective, a legal nonprofit focused on representing marginalized groups against powerful institutions. ­Philanthropy for legal work and “movement lawyering” is common in the United States.

But in Canada, this is almost non-existent, with a few rare exceptions. Even with topshelf lawyers working for cut-rate salaries, it’s crucial to develop a sustainable financial model. Thank you for this story. The legal community should be wishing great success to this project.

Paul Champ Principal lawyer, Champ & Associates

The hottest stories on precedentmagazine.com Most views This Bay Street partner is a gifted skateboarder Most likes Meet the top lawyer at one of Toronto’s most buzz-worthy companies Most retweets The 2021 Precedent Innovation Awards

Our People

Moment of pride

On-Demand Your CPD. Webcasts

In this issue, we profile a litigator who has trained to swim across vast bodies of water.

So we asked our contributors to tell us about a personal accomplishment that has nothing to do with work

From Anytime, your legal anywhere: community.

Resources at your fingertips!

Download one today.

“I’m currently learning French, which will be my fifth language,” says Hanna Barczyk, an award-winning illustrator. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker and the Atlantic, among other publications. In this issue, she illustrated our cover story, an investigation into why the legal profession’s long-term effort to increase diversity has produced such ­lacklustre results (“Back to the drawing board,” p.20).

Erin Cowling is the founder and CEO of Flex Legal, a network of freelance lawyers based in Toronto. For this issue, she contributed a column that explores the surprising downside of complaining about work with colleagues (“Learning to talk,” p.17). Her proudest outside-of-work accomplishment dates back to the fall of 2020. “For fun, and as a distraction from the pandemic, I completed the National Novel Writing Month challenge,” she says. “You have to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. I completed it again in 2021.”

“I’m most proud (lately) of becoming a regular camper,” says Lauren Tamaki, a Canadian illustrator based in New York. Her work has been published in, among other publications, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Walrus. For this issue, she produced a vibrant portrait illustration of Warda Shazadi Meighen, who has dedicated her legal career to making life better for immigrants and refugees around the world (“True purpose,” p.15).

store.lso.ca/ ondemand

@LSOCPD Law Society of Ontario CPD

PRECEDENTMAGAZINE.COM

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Brief

THE LATEST FROM THE LEGAL WORLD

BEST PRACTICES

True purpose Inside Warda Shazadi Meighen’s mission to make life better for immigrants and refugees around the world

by Beth Hitchcock illustration by Lauren Tamaki

“ As lawyers, we often look for safe spaces to vent.”

Erin Cowling on the trouble with complaining about work too often p.17

As a six-year-old living in Lahore, the second-largest city in Pakistan, Warda ­Shazadi Meighen knew that her family had to be careful. A constitutional change in the 1970s meant that their religious identity could be considered a criminal offence. Facing the threat of persecution at home, the family sought refugee status in Canada. At the age of seven, Shazadi Meighen settled in Toronto.

Today, she can remember attending legal hearings with her family and gathering around the phone when their lawyer called with updates on their case. At every turn, her family felt the full support of the justice system. “But we were lucky,” she says. Years later, she would discover that not all newcomers to the country receive such a warm welcome. “The more I became entrenched in Canadian society, the more I realized how far there is to go.”

As a young person, Shazadi Meighen decided to one day help other families find safety in Canada. And, in 2007, she arrived at law school at the University of Toronto with that objective in mind. But after graduation, she was swept up in the large-firm recruitment machine. Ultimately, she moved to Manhattan to work as a corporate lawyer at Shearman & Sterling. About two years into that role, she accepted a short-term placement at the United Nations in Tanzania, where she assisted with prosecutions connected to the Rwandan genocide. That brief

PRECEDENTMAGAZINE.COM

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Brief ­ ssignment helped her reconnect to the true a ­reason she chose to study law. “My senses were activated,” she recalls, “as was my notion of justice.”

Shazadi Meighen returned to New York more motivated than ever to practise in the refugee and immigration field. First, she took a job at the top-tier immigration firm Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP, where she helped relocate international employees for large multinational companies. About two years later, she moved to the U.K. with her now-husband, Hugh Meighen.

He took a position at the London office of his firm, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, while she enrolled in Oxford University’s master’s program in refugee and forced migration studies.

As a student, Shazadi Meighen wrote her thesis on a case that had been led by Waldman & Associates, one of the top refugee and immigration firms in Toronto. In 2015, when she visited Canada to attend a family wedding, she connected with Lorne Waldman, the founder of the firm, through a lawschool colleague. Later that year, she moved back to Toronto and joined the firm. (Her husband soon became a partner at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP.) Finally, she was doing the work she’d long dreamed about. Though the caseload was intense — she often had to balance about 100 files at any given moment — she had the power to make a difference in people’s lives.

“Helping someone whose citizenship has been revoked without due process or helping them to be reunited with their

“My senses were activated, as was my notion of justice.”

Warda ­Shazadi Meighen

child,” she says, “felt very different than completing a great business deal.”

Looking back on that time, Waldman is deeply impressed with the tenacity that Shazadi Meighen brought to her work. “Warda does not settle with the status quo,” he says.

“Everyone knows she fully understands the challenges our clients faced because of her own personal experiences as a refugee.”

In early 2019, Shazadi Meighen and her colleague Jacqueline Swaisland started talking about launching their own small firm. Another colleague, Erin Simpson, soon joined the discussion.

Together, the trio boasted a skill set of business acumen, market strategy and legal expertise.

By the fall of 2020, Landings LLP had opened up for business. “The name was the hardest part!” laughs Shazadi Meighen. “We wanted something egalitarian and focused on what our clients are reaching out for.

They want to land in a place and find a home. It’s about them, not us.”

One of her largest efforts at the new firm has been supporting refugees from Afghanistan after last year’s American military withdrawal. “Warda pulled together an incredible team of pro bono lawyers,” says Simpson, “and advocated at all levels of the international community.”

Outside of her traditional legal practice, Shazadi Meighen also advocates for broader policy change in the refugee and immigration space. For instance, she recently co-authored a report that called on the Canadian government to make immigration pathways available to people who have been displaced by climate change. The report urged swift action, in part because Canada is staring down an “impending wave of forced displacement.”

As a firm owner, running her own show, Shazadi Meighen has more control over her schedule. In the future, she hopes to use that control to spend more time with her young daughters, aged two and four. Most importantly, though, when families need an update on their case, she’s now the lawyer on the other end of the phone. “When we can navigate the system and find solutions for our ­clients,” she says, “these calls are incredible highs.”

Timeline of a refugee and immigration lawyer

Year of call 2010 (Ontario) and 2011 (New York)

2009: Law degree in hand, Shazadi Meighen joins McCarthys as an articling s­ tudent.

2011: Now called to the bar in both Ontario and New York, Shazadi Meighen becomes an associate in the corporate group at Shearman & Sterling.

Summer 2012: During a placement at the United Nations in

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­ anzania, Shazadi Meighen works T on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. As this role comes to a close, she feels a renewed passion to work on behalf of people who most need legal help.

Fall 2012: Shazadi Meighen joins the New York–based immigration firm Fragomen, Del Rey, ­Bernsen & Loewy LLP. 2014: She enters the master’s program in refugee and forced migration studies at Oxford University.

2015: After moving back to Toronto, Shazadi Meighen joins the

immigration and refugee law firm Waldman & Associates.

2017: She joins the faculty of law at the University of Toronto as an adjunct professor of refugee law.

2020: Along with two colleagues, she co-founds a new immigration and refugee law firm: Landings LLP. “It was time to build something, and do that with people I really respect,” she says. “Though it’s been challenging to launch through COVID, all the intuitions we had about working together are intact.”

PHOTO: ANTONIA GIROUX PHOTOGRAPHY

Warda Shazadi Meighen Partner, Landings LLP

2008: After her second year of law school at the University of Toronto, Shazadi Meighen splits her summer between Shearman & Sterling in New York City and McCarthy Tétrault LLP in Toronto.

Brief OPINION

Learning to talk When we endlessly complain about work with our colleagues, we’re only hurting ourselves

ILLUSTRATION: BRIAN MORGAN/ADOBE

by Erin Cowling

In the early days of the pandemic, I turned to social media as a break from the stress of work and life. Not surprisingly, instead of finding a healthy respite or supportive messages, I found myself doomscrolling through a relentless stream of negativity. The repetition of the same depressing news items and bleak forecasts provided little comfort. In truth, I felt worse. The simplest solution was to delete all social media from my phone.

A similar culture of despair sometimes cuts through the legal profession. As lawyers, we often look for safe spaces to vent.

We might want to hash out our latest encounter with a difficult client or a combative opposing counsel. We might wish to discuss issues outside of our day-to-day legal work, including firm politics, salary decisions or our place on the partnership track.

These conversations are often valuable.

Talking to lawyers who understand our problems can help us brainstorm solutions and feel supported. But when lawyers repeatedly gather just to complain about work, that can be as harmful as poring over negative posts on Twitter.

Psychologists have a name for this sort of counterproductive behaviour: co-rumination. We’ve all seen it in action. A group gets together to rehash the same problems and dwell on the same concerns, without discussing solutions. The conversation can be about anything, from work to relationships to family drama. Often, such discussions include mutual encouragement to recount “war stories” or other difficult situations that reinforce the same grim mindset. Though co-rumination feels good in the moment and helps us bond with others, it can also cause anxiety and depression. After all, it’s easy to slide into anxious or depressive thoughts if we believe that some aspect of our lives is irredeemably terrible and that there’s no hope for improvement.

Thankfully, it’s possible to address problems in a way that’s less toxic and more productive. Here are some tips that might help

you rethink your approach to conversations about work with friends and colleagues.

Limit how long you’re allowed to complain.

If you or a colleague need to blow off steam about a work-related incident, limit the venting session to 10 minutes. Then spend 10 minutes talking about something good that happened on a file or with a client.

Don’t fall into pessimistic despair. Instead of agreeing with colleagues that everything is miserable and adding your own complaints, listen to their concerns, acknowledge their feelings and provide encouragement. Then change the subject to something more positive.

Take action. Rather than repeatedly voicing the same complaints, switch to active problem-solving. Work with colleagues to think of ideas that might change or improve the situation. Taking a small step toward action can be empowering.

Check yourself. Before you pick up the phone to vent to a peer, stop and think: Does my colleague need to hear this right now? Will the conversation make anything better? You might determine that a call to a colleague is warranted, but take the time to think through that decision.

Be compassionate. It is easy to get caught in this cycle, and it is not easy to escape, so be patient with yourself and others. You can’t break this habit overnight.

We all need to feel like we are understood and supported. That’s normal. But we also need to examine the costs and benefits of continually discussing nothing but problems with our colleagues. Most of the time, that only makes things worse.

Erin Cowling is the founder and CEO of Flex Legal, a network of freelance lawyers based in Toronto. Her practice focuses on civil litigation.

TURNING PROBLEMS INTO PRECEDENTS.

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How this in-house counsel expanded her knowledge of the law In 2015, about five years into her legal career, Michelle Jackson-Forbes noticed that her workload had become increasingly complex. As the general counsel of a debt-collection company, she’d had to take on responsibilities that fell outside the original scope of the job. “I was running into more and more occasions when the right course of action wasn’t clear,” she says, “and I had to reach out to external counsel for advice.”

To keep up with the demands of the role, Jackson-Forbes knew that she needed to deepen her understanding of the core practice areas in the business world, including corporate transactions and contract law. So she enrolled in the business law specialization of the Osgoode Professional LLM, a rigorous graduate program that she could complete on a part-time basis. “It was very flexible,” she says. “I was able to keep working full-time right through it.”

To her delight, the program blended legal theory with practical training.

Her coursework often took the form of mock work assignments that she could work through under the guidance of an instructor who had real-world experience in the field.

Today, Jackson-Forbes is an assistant vice-president and senior counsel at the investment and insurance company Ivari.

Her job requires expertise in contracts, compliance and many other areas of business law. Thankfully, the knowledge she acquired in the professional master’s program continues to serve her well.

When puzzling over a legal problem, for instance, the perfect solution will sometimes appear in her mind, seemingly out of nowhere. “And then it hits me,” she says. “It’s from Osgoode.”

MICHELLE JACKSON-FORBES Osgoode LLM: Business Law, 2019 Assistant vice-president and senior counsel, Ivari Year of call: 2010

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Back to the drawing board

by Luc Rinaldi illustrations by Hanna Barczyk

Over the past decade, the legal profession has confronted its lack of diversity like never before. The largest law firms promised to add more women and racialized lawyers to their partnerships. Consultants descended on Bay Street to overhaul a corporate culture that so often alienates those from marginalized communities. A new dawn was on the horizon.

But very little has changed. Most partnerships look no different, and lawyers continue to encounter subtle acts of racism and sexism.

Why hasn’t law made more progress?

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manda has always felt like an outsider. In her first job out of law school, at a boutique firm in a small city outside of Toronto, she was the only person of colour at the office. When she was called to the bar in the 2010s, her boss, a white senior partner in his 70s, offered his congratulations. Her parents must be proud, he said, because she was the first professional in her family.

Amanda was confused. Not only was that untrue, but she’d also never discussed her relatives’ careers with him. She couldn’t help but wonder: had he just assumed they weren’t professionals because of her ethnicity? She dismissed it as a thoughtless comment and tried to put it out of her mind.

But similar incidents kept occurring. A clerk once told Amanda, who asked that we not use her real name, to close her office door when she was eating “smelly” food.

(The clerk was complaining about rice, chicken and soy sauce.) She was also yelled at more often than anyone else in the office.

Amanda couldn’t tell if colleagues treated her differently because she was young, female or racialized — or if it was her fault.

“I thought maybe I was just really stupid,” she told me, “or that I didn’t understand the law.”

One day, Amanda was in the office kitchen, washing her lunch dishes. While she stood over the sink, her boss walked up behind her and said, “Maybe you should rethink your career to doing something more like this.” She was appalled, but she had no idea what to say. “I was 25 and brand new,” she recalled. “I was scared of losing my job.”

“ I was 25 and brand new. I was scared of losing my job.”

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Amanda never reported that comment — or anything else — to the office manager because it seemed futile. Her boss, who brought in money and clients and paid the manager’s salary, was untouchable. She, on the other hand, felt like a pariah. “I wanted to quit so many times,” she said. She considered going back to school to get her MBA or jumping ship to the tech sector. “I clearly don’t belong here,” she told herself.

Amanda’s story stands in stark contrast to the inclusive culture that most law firms claim to have built. Many firms in Ontario have a pro-diversity statement on their website, touting a commitment to fostering an equitable and welcoming workplace.

Over the past decade, law firms have struck diversity committees, launched affinity groups, hired consultants and conducted unconscious bias training. On paper, the legal profession should be a multicultural utopia that celebrates people of all genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations, ages and abilities.

In reality, though, the legal world can be a hostile place. In late 2021, I spoke with about two dozen lawyers, most of them women or people of colour, about their experiences in the profession. Like Amanda, many of them had been, or continue to be, the only racialized lawyers on their teams. Few of them had encountered blatant acts of discrimination, but most of them had stories of insensitive remarks and insidious acts of exclusion.

The upper reaches of the profession remain strikingly homogenous. Though Toronto is one of the most diverse cities in the world, few of its law firms reflect that.

Back in 2013, 10 percent of racialized law-

“ When it comes to ourselves, we don’t always stand up for what we deserve.”

yers in Ontario were partners in private practice, compared to 21 percent of white lawyers. Today, those numbers are virtually unchanged. According to the latest data, eight percent of racialized lawyers are lawfirm partners, compared with 17 percent of their white counterparts.

The lack of women in the partnership ranks is another long-standing problem.

Nearly a decade ago, in Ontario, 11 percent of women in law had made partner, while 25 percent of men had achieved that milestone.

In today’s legal profession, a mere nine percent of women are partners, compared with 21 percent of men. That’s hardly a sign of improvement.

All of the evidence points to an alarming conclusion. The pro-diversity initiatives that law firms have invested in over the past decade haven’t accomplished much at all.

I

n my conversations with lawyers for this piece, many described subtle acts of racism and sexism. Several of the lawyers had stories of going to court and being misidentified, almost always by older white men, as law clerks, court reporters and assistants. Sudevi Mukherjee-Gothi, a partner at Pallett Valo LLP, told me that firms sometimes ask racialized lawyers to shorten their names for their convenience, a request that can be deeply hurtful. “Your name is a legacy from your family, your ancestry,” she said. “A name is a badge of honour, at least to me.”

One woman told me she’d straightened her hair for a job interview to diminish her Blackness. After landing the job, she let it go curly again, which prompted a partner to comment, “I liked it better the other way.”

In those moments, most people are unsure how to respond. Emily Fan, a partner at Lerners LLP, once attended a work dinner where a senior lawyer from a different firm, unable to recall the name of a man with Asian heritage, called him “Mr. Ching Chang Chong.” “The whole table froze,” Fan told me. She wanted to say something, but she was in shock and didn’t know how to challenge a much more senior lawyer when she was so junior. She also wanted to come across as a competent, hard-working lawyer, not an activist or a troublemaker.

“It’s funny,” said Fan. “We’re litigators.

We’re so good at fighting for our clients and asking for exactly what we want in that adversarial setting. But when it comes to ourselves, we don’t always stand up for what we deserve.”

H

ow can such incidents still happen, despite all the effort to make law more inclusive? A large part of the answer lies in the fact that, according to the latest research, the diversity initiatives that dominate the corporate world aren’t very effective.

Consider the example of unconscious bias training. Over the past decade, nearly every lawyer on Bay Street has filed into a packed

conference room where a speaker, often an external consultant, helps them identify and overcome deep-seated prejudices they didn’t know they had. The idea is that, following this internal examination, the professionals will be less likely to make hurtful comments and more likely to support equity-seeking groups. Not long ago, this seemed like a revolutionary weapon in the battle against prejudice. Many academics now doubt that it works at all. “[H]undreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that antibias training does not reduce bias, alter behaviour or change the workplace,” wrote Alexandra Kalev and Frank Dobbin in the academic journal Anthropology Now. Kalev, a professor at Tel Aviv University and a leading expert on diversity, has identified several flaws that are baked into most unconscious bias training sessions. Most participants, for one thing, quickly forget what they hear. Worse still, some people feel that they’ve been “cured” of their biases, giving them a false sense of progress.

These sessions can also trigger a backlash.

One lawyer who has conducted unconscious bias training told me that she has seen members of the profession, particularly older white men, respond with annoyance: walking out, complaining that others were being too sensitive or getting defensive and asking questions like, “What did I do wrong?” To be sure, those lawyers are to blame for their inappropriate conduct. But if the training is supposed to change hearts and minds, this is hardly an ideal outcome.

To Kalev, unconscious bias training appeals to employers because of its speed

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“ If you have a systemic problem, you need a systemic solution.”

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and simplicity. “It’s a quick in and out,” she said. “It’s an easy thing to market and to show a regulator.” But unlearning discriminatory ideas, especially those that reside in our unconscious mind, is a long-term project. Not a one-and-done affair.

Sonia Kang, a professor at the Rotman School of Management, told me that the least effective diversity initiatives are the ones that focus on changing individuals.

Unconscious bias training certainly fits that description. But Kang also pointed to conferences that teach women and racialized lawyers how to “lean in” and take ownership of their careers. Such programs have little to no effect on the structural conditions that give rise to disparity.

Fortunately, Kang has identified a range of evidence-backed ways to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace. On the whole, she told me, organizations need to pay close attention to the core policies that guide recruitment, promotions, payroll, parental leave and beyond. “If you have a systemic problem,” she said, “you need a systemic solution.”

Some of her suggestions are deceptively simple. When writing a job post, for instance, evidence shows that using genderneutral words like “creative” and “dedicated” — as opposed to adjectives that are stereotypically seen as masculine, such as “competitive” and “strong” — can lead to an uptick in female applicants.

Another strategy can make promotions more equitable. Statistically, white men are most likely to receive perfect marks on performance reviews that use scales from one to 10, an advantage when competing for a bet-

“ You need to do the real, behind-the-scenes work to create an inclusive environment.”

ter position. (The prevailing explanation for this discrepancy is that Western culture finds it easier to imagine a man as “brilliant” and thus deserving of a perfect 10.) By switching to a scale that goes up to six, businesses could eliminate this inherent bias and ­promote more women.

Kang also told me that, when a senior position becomes available, businesses should consider all possible employees for the promotion unless someone asks to be left out of the process. This is called the opt-out model.

Research shows that it results in more promotions for women and people of colour.

The opt-out model can also be applied to parental leave. Even when companies offer identical leave policies to mothers and fathers, men take less time off — if any at all.

As a result, women who take a full parental leave are often seen as less committed to the job. The solution, according to Kang, is to require that all new parents take time off unless they opt out of the policy. Evidence shows that this boosts male participation and reduces the negative impact of parental leave on women.

A law firm’s leaders have the most power to set new norms. Imagine a top male partner taking a 26-week parental leave.

“It’s particularly important for high-status groups, or groups that have traditionally held power, to do these things, because then they’re modelling,” said Kang. “If they’re doing it, then it’s okay for everyone to do it.”

None of these reforms will change a company’s culture in an instant. Kang admitted that fact. But, over time, they can alter the demographic makeup of a firm and its leadership.

T

o their credit, some Bay Street firms have begun to think beyond the basics of diversity and inclusion. There’s been a concerted effort, for instance, to improve student recruitment. Many firms now reach out to racialized student groups in advance of application deadlines and, in job interviews, ask a standard set of questions that test legal competence instead of those that assess whether a candidate fits the firm culture.

McCarthy Tétrault LLP recently launched a 1L summer program specifically for Black and Indigenous students. Last year, seven students participated in the program; five were Black and two were Indigenous. All but one of them are set to join the firm as 2Ls this upcoming summer. (The student who isn’t returning was offered a position but has moved to New York City.) During the traditional second-year recruitment process, which took place this past fall, McCarthys hired an additional six Black students and one more Indigenous student to join the firm in the summer.

Getting a diverse group of lawyers in the door is one thing. Keeping them is another.

Several firms told me about programs they’d recently launched to help lawyers move up the partnership track. Examples include sponsorship programs to help equity-seeking lawyers get more opportunities and workallocation strategies to ensure partners assign files equitably. I heard, anecdotally, that part-

ners have started to change their assigning habits based on these programs, not realizing how homogenous their teams were until the data was presented to them. Such developments have the potential to buoy a larger number of women and racialized lawyers into the upper echelons of Big Law. At Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, Laleh Moshiri, the firm’s national director of diversity and inclusion, developed a transgender-inclusion policy before the firm had an openly trans employee. She changed signage around the office to be gender-neutral, encouraged staff to disclose their pronouns and drafted guidelines for how the firm would support a firm member through a transition. Shortly thereafter, a BLG firm member publicly came out as trans, crediting the policy for making him feel comfortable enough to transition at work. “It’s very easy to put up rainbow flags during Pride,” said Moshiri. “But you need to do the real, behind-the-scenes work to create an inclusive environment.”

Meanwhile, at McCarthys, all partners, lawyers and staff are expected to contribute to diversity and inclusion by, for instance, mentoring diverse lawyers, developing new policies or planning educational events.

At the end of the year, lawyers have to list these contributions when they apply for bonuses. As Atrisha Lewis, a partner at the firm, put it to me: “If you don’t have anything to put in that bucket, that has a serious impact for you.”

Data collection has also improved. Many firms now conduct surveys that ask lawyers whether they can be their authentic selves at work and what they think about the firm’s

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“ The fight for race-based inclusion is most often going to fall on the shoulders of those who are racialized.” existing diversity initiatives. When I spoke to Kristin Taylor, the managing partner at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, she was happy with the high level of participation in one such survey, which indicated to her that employees trusted the firm. And while the firm’s partners have historically skewed white and male, she said the firm is working hard to change that fact. “We’re not keeping up with the Canadian population,” she said, adding that the onus is on firm leadership to lead the change. “Partners in particular have an obligation to create [a diverse and inclusive] firm, and they should be held accountable for that.”

T

he most successful diversity and inclusion programs have one thing in common: buy-in from the top. When senior partners are committed to building a better workplace, they invest the necessary resources and empower their team to do the work.

Goldblatt Partners LLP provides an illustrative example. In the mid-2010s, the labour law firm’s founder, Howard Goldblatt, served as vice-chair of a Law Society of Ontario working group dedicated to addressing challenges faced by racialized licensees. The group’s 2016 report proposed 13 strategies to foster diversity, including ­creating robust human rights policies.

By that time, Goldblatt Partners, which has long prided itself on being progressive and social-justice-oriented, had achieved gender parity in the partnership. But it had no racialized partners. And, in the associate

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ranks, there was just one Indigenous lawyer and two people of colour. The firm wanted to do better.

Initially, Goldblatt Partners took the typical steps, such as holding unconscious bias training and launching a diversity committee. But Emma Phillips, a partner and cochair of that committee, told me that only got them so far. “It’s pretty easy for lawyers to get to the point where they understand, at a conceptual level, what these concepts mean,” she said. “It’s a lot harder for all of us to get to the point where we’re actually changing our conduct.”

Goldblatt Partners soon hired a diversity consultant, who helped the firm identify three priority areas. First, the firm struck a committee to look at how to collect demographic data that could serve as a baseline to measure progress in the future. Second, it started re-examining its mentorship program through a diversity lens. And third, the firm has been hard at work on a microaggression protocol: a guideline to help members of the firm report and respond to subtle acts of exclusion.

In May 2021, the firm invited its articling students to provide feedback on the protocol. “This is a protocol that’s meant to alleviate some of what students and young associates have been going through,” said Simran Prihar, a Goldblatt partner and co-chair of the diversity committee. “Trying to address that without their input seemed to make no sense.”

The firm also encourages lawyers to docket the time they devote to diversity and inclusion, just as they do with other non-billable activities (such as mentoring an associate). “The fight for race-based inclusion is most often going to fall on the shoulders of

those who are racialized,” said Kiran Kang, an associate at the firm (and the sister of professor Sonia Kang). “Which comes with a heavy burden.” To Kang, it’s particularly important that the firm is willing to recognize lawyers who take on this work.

Over the past six years, the firm’s work on diversity has yielded noticeable results. Now, 13 of the 65 lawyers at the firm are racialized or Indigenous. Three of those lawyers are partners. “We’ve made dramatic and important efforts,” said Goldblatt. “But we also know that there’s still lots of work to be done.”

U

ltimately, Amanda decided to stay in law. These days, she works as an associate at a small office in downtown Toronto, where she is one of the only lawyers of colour. Her firm doesn’t have an inclusion officer or a diversity committee, and she doesn’t feel empowered to create one. “It would be me and one other person,” she told me. “And what would we say? ‘You guys need to treat us better’?”

Amanda doesn’t think of herself as a radical. “I’m perfectly fine with the old white guys continuing to run the firm,” she said.

“They have excellent strategy ideas and bring in wealthy clients.” At the same time, she knows that the pro-diversity messaging that’s rampant in the legal profession does not match reality. “The only thing I want changed is the treatment of underlings. I just don’t want to be treated like a second-class citizen when I’m here working really hard for you.”

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Debrief LIFE BEYOND THE LAW

THE INSIDER

In the waning days of 2021, the pop-culture

Ride on

world watched in shock as a well-known television character died after a particularly strenuous workout. Mr. Big, Carrie Bradshaw’s husband on the eagerly anticipated Sex and the City reboot series, had a heart attack moments after finishing his 1,000th ride on his beloved Peloton bike. Suddenly, the internet was aflame with interviews with cardiologists and outrage that Carrie didn’t call 911. Peloton produced a clever response ad that soon went viral (though it was subsequently yanked when the actor who plays Mr. Big faced multiple allegations of sexual assault, which he went on to deny). Investors seemed to worry that the media attention would permanently damage the company’s

Why are so many lawyers obsessed with Peloton?

by Leah Rumack illustrations by Hudson Christie

“ It involves a lot of preparation, and you always need a contingency plan.”

Robert McGlashan on what open-water swimming has in common with the law p.34

brand: the day after the episode landed, Peloton’s share price fell by 11 percent.

To all the lawyers who were obsessed with this extremely trendy piece of exercise equipment, however, Peloton’s unfortunate moment in the news cycle wasn’t about to dampen their enthusiasm. For anyone unfamiliar with the Peloton bike, it looks like a typical stationary bike, but it has a touchscreen monitor that connects to live or ondemand spin classes taught by a bevy of ridiculously good-looking instructors from the company’s studio in New York City. During the live classes, a leaderboard shows the rider with the greatest energy output atop all the losers playing catch-up from below. The cheapest model will cost you $1,895, plus

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Debrief

“Any time I have 15 minutes between meetings or a half-hour at the end of the day, I just hop on the bike.”

Rebecca Shoom Partner, Lerners LLP

$49 a month to access the app, which also includes non-cycling fitness classes like weight training and yoga.

But Peloton is more than a bike. It’s also a social-media platform. On the app, you can add friends and colleagues and keep track of each other’s workouts like a bunch of angry cheerleaders in spandex. A quick search through the app’s user database reveals a mass of lawyers. More than 13,700 members have proudly included the #PelotonLawyers tag in their profiles, while another 7,700 have identified themselves as #PeloLawMoms. On Facebook, meanwhile, there’s also a Peloton Law Moms group with 5,200 members.

“I feel like I’m a member of a cult,” laughs Chris Horkins, a partner in the litigation group at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP. He and his wife (also a lawyer at Cassels) bought a Peloton in April 2021, shortly after the birth of their first child. With a baby at home and the pandemic alive and well, the couple no longer felt comfortable going to the boot-camp classes they used to attend several times a week. (Even if they had been comfortable, the latest batch of restrictions had forced the classes to close.) In hardly any time at all, Horkins was hooked on the bike. And he soon discovered that many of his colleagues and lawyer-friends suffered from the same obsession.

Why are lawyers so devoted to their Pelotons? The first answer to this painful — but

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necessary — question is the spirit of friendly competition that’s baked into the company’s technology. “You can track how other people are doing and compare your stats,” says Horkins. Among hyper-competitive lawyers, this can whip up real-world motivation. “I mostly just like seeing the other lawyers at Cassels or my brother. I’ll give them a hard time if they haven’t been on in a while.”

Rebecca Shoom, a partner at Lerners LLP, got her bike in August 2020. At the time, her condo’s gym was still off-limits thanks to COVID, so she couldn’t meet her personal trainer there to work out each week. She had never taken spin classes, but she knew she needed structure to stay active.

Her Peloton currently resides in her home office, where it taunts her all day long.

There’s an unexpected advantage, however, to placing the bike so close to her desk. “If I need to get amped up for a contentious discussion with opposing counsel,” she says, “I can do a high-energy class first.”

Back in February 2020, Sabrina Bruno, corporate legal counsel at the children’s entertainment company WildBrain, bought a Peloton to get in shape for her upcoming wedding. (It was supposed to be on a Jamaican beach, but the pandemic has forced the postponement of her nuptials about, in her words, “a million times.”) Today, she proudly rides the bike several times a week, paying close attention to her stats. One

source of frustration is that she also plays softball, ball hockey and ice hockey, and there’s no way to add those workouts to her Peloton profile. When she plays a threehour hockey game, her connections think she took the day off. “My friends just look at my profile and they’re like, ‘She was really lazy today,’” says Bruno. “But it was totally the opposite!”

Another core reason that lawyers love Peloton is how well its classes fit into their busy work schedules. Almost two years into the pandemic, most lawyers are still logging long hours, mostly at home, and finding it harder than ever to carve out time for exercise. “Being a lawyer is obviously hectic,” says Shoom. “But one of the weird perks is that your schedule is flexible, too. Any time I have 15 minutes between meetings or a half-hour at the end of the day, I just hop on the bike.”

Horkins, too, loves the flexibility. “If you’ve got a busy practice and a family, finding the time to go have a workout can be difficult — and I was never a big fitness guy to begin with,” he says. “I like being able to say, ‘Okay, I’ve got 20 minutes. I’m going to do a 20-minute class right now.’”

Bruno’s workload doesn’t leave her a lot of free time, but having a Peloton helps her maintain some semblance of a regime. “If it’s in your house, it’s hard to make excuses not to work out,” she says. “It’s right in front of you.”

Debrief GOING IN-HOUSE

Great escape In search of a long-term investment property, two lawyers teamed up to buy a cottage with million-dollar views

by Jeremy Freed photography by Johnny C.Y. Lam

Lindsay Charles and Nick Todorovic pulled into the driveway of a three-bedroom cottage on Wolfe Lake, which is located about an hour’s drive north of Kingston, full of excitement. The real estate listing had showcased an impressive country retreat, and the pair couldn’t wait to see it with their own eyes. Once they stepped out of the car, the tranquil atmosphere, the picture-perfect view and the cottage’s high ceilings lived up to their loftiest hopes. In an instant, both Charles and Todorovic had the same thought: Yep, this is the one.

That moment took place in March of 2021. At least a year earlier, Charles and Todorovic, long-time friends and colleagues at the personal-injury law firm McLeish Orlando LLP, had started to talk about the benefits of buying an investment property and renting it out. “We’re both fairly captivated by the real estate market,” says Charles.

“We knew that this would be a smart financial decision.”

The duo decided to pool their cash and purchase a property together. From the beginning, the idea was to buy a cottage outside the city. The lawyers planned to list it on short-term rental websites like Cottages in Canada for most of the year and use that revenue to afford the maintenance costs and any other expenses that might arise. Because rental websites let users take properties off the market at any moment, the pair would be able to use the cottage as a part-time vacation home. Not a bad perk.

After Charles and Todorovic visited the cottage on Wolfe Lake, they made an offer. And, after a brief bidding war, it was accepted. “We were pretty excited,” says Todorovic. “Then the hard work started.”

With the summer fast approaching and the demand for cottage rentals about to

Lindsay Charles and Nick Todorovic, colleagues at McLeish Orlando, stand outside their cottage on Wolfe Lake

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The owners: Lindsay Charles and Nick Todorovic Charles’s role: Partner at McLeish Orlando LLP Todorovic’s role: Partner at McLeish Orlando LLP Years of call: 2014 (Charles) and 2016 (Todorovic) Location: South Frontenac Cottage profile: Three bedrooms plus a loft, 2,700 square feet

1

spike, the lawyers were eager to list the property online. To get it ready for the season, Charles and Todorovic bought a full complement of furniture from IKEA and took time off work to transport the items to the cottage in jam-packed rental trucks. At the same time, they hired contractors to apply a fresh coat of paint to the walls and construct a set of stairs going down to the dock. “Cottages are a lot of work,” says Charles. “So it’s nice to have someone that you can trust wholeheartedly to help with managing it all.”

After a fully booked summer that generated rave reviews, Charles and Todorovic were thrilled with the purchase. Looking ahead, they’re hoping to acquire a series of rental cottages that will add up to a robust real estate portfolio.

By the fall, both lawyers had started to enjoy the cottage themselves, both as a quiet place to work remotely and as a getaway spot with friends and family. “Lindsay and I keep telling each other we can’t believe we got this place,” says Todorovic. “It’s kind of like ­winning the lottery.”

1 & 2. Home decor While the house is minimally decorated for a modern, hotel-like vibe, Charles and Todorovic have hung up a selection of vintage maps of their favourite places — including Copenhagen, Toronto and Wolfe Lake itself — to add some subtle personality to the space.

2 3. Lake effect The shores of Wolfe Lake are home to a mix of farms, cottages and fishing camps. The area is remarkably quiet.

“A small fishing boat might come up first thing in the morning and cast a couple of lines,” says Todorovic.

“But that’s pretty much it.”

3

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Debrief

4

4 & 5. Entertainment value When Charles spends time at the cottage, she often invites friends and family to tag along. On those occasions, the open-concept kitchen and ­living area is an ideal hangout spot.

“It’s nice that people can be in the living room and you can be cooking dinner,” she says. “You still feel like you’re part of the same environment.”

6. Cottage life The large windows that overlook the lake are the cottage’s defining feature. “It’s up at the top of a hill,” explains Charles, “so it has a spectacular view.”

5

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Debrief SECRET LIFE

Dive in

by Danielle Groen photography by Steph Martyniuk

When you’re a marathon open-water swimmer like Robert McGlashan, you get very familiar, very quickly, with marine life and Mother Nature. McGlashan has been shadowed by dolphins and passed by speedy penguins while crossing the Strait of Magellan in southern Chile. He wrestled three-foot waves in darkness on Lake Ontario after the summer weather turned. He outraced hypothermia in the thin air of Lake Titicaca and battled exhaustion — and exceedingly sore shoulders — on a 26-hour swim across Lake Geneva.

Unsurprisingly, McGlashan relishes the challenge. “You’re away from civilization, you really feel connected to the elements and you’re experiencing something you don’t during your normal workday,” says the 41-year-old civil litigator and partner at Blakeney Henneberry Murphy & Galligan. “It’s exciting to see what you’re capable of.”

McGlashan grew up swimming competitively in pools (and recreationally in lakes), but it was after he started practising law in 2006 that he gravitated toward longer distances in open water.

In 2009, he signed up for the 10-kilometre race in the Welland Canal — not too nippy, not too much of a current, good for a novice — and came back every year till 2018, when he turned his attention to even more ambitious swims. “I really enjoy travel,” he says, “so I started looking at bodies of water that were in places I wanted to visit and had a different difficulty factor.”

Last summer, McGlashan transformed his hobby into a fundraising tool called Swim for Change. “I thought of doing three swims for three different charities,” he says — across Lake Erie to support Shelter Movers, which helps survivors of gender-based violence; across Lake Ontario for World Wildlife Fund; and around California’s Angel Island for the Mountain Gorilla Conservation Society of Canada.

How does he do it all? “Just like with law, it involves a lot of preparation, and you always need a contingency plan,” he says. Okay: would McGlashan rather be surprised in court or in the water? He considers this, then cops out with a laugh. “I don’t want to be surprised anywhere.” But so far, not even the most treacherous swims — or cases — have slowed him down.

Robert McGlashan Blakeney Henneberry Murphy & Galligan

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