{"id":30062,"date":"2018-02-28T09:55:38","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T09:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/?p=30062"},"modified":"2019-04-17T17:13:59","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T17:13:59","slug":"leading-in-litigation-5-women-litigators-discuss-their-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/leading-in-litigation-5-women-litigators-discuss-their-role\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading in Litigation: 5 Women Litigators Discuss Their Role"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"370\" height=\"236\" src=\"http:\/\/legalexecutiveinstitute.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/CIH_Roundtable_Groupshot-370x236.jpg\" class=\"alignleft wp-post-image\" alt=\"Canada\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Recently, Thomson Reuters\u2019 <em>Canadian Lawyer<\/em> magazine <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canadianlawyermag.com\/author\/jennifer-brown\/leading-in-litigation-15197\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">brought together a cross-section of leading women in litigation<\/a>, from private practice and in-house, to talk about how they came into the profession they love, the challenges and rewards they\u2019ve faced, and the changes they have observed as they have risen to the positions they hold today. They discussed the importance of mentors and how they are trying to pay it forward. They also spoke candidly about the myths around women in litigation that still linger in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The litigators we spoke with were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Melissa MacKewn, partner at Crawley MacKewn Brush;<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Reena Lalji, senior counsel at CIBC;<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Andrea Laing, partner at Blake Cassels &amp; Graydon;<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Catherine Beagan Flood, partner at Blake Cassels &amp; Graydon; <em>and<\/em><\/li>\n<li>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Linda Plumpton, partner at Torys<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>Canadian Lawyer:<\/em> How did you become the kind of litigation lawyer you are now?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Melissa MacKewn:<\/strong> I thought I was going to be a human rights lawyer all through law school. In fact, the reason I ended up going to Faskens is because I had said I was interested in a secondment to the Human Rights Commission where I went for three months. I did one human rights case in Ontario and decided that it wasn\u2019t what I thought it would be and decided to do commercial work. On the securities side, it happened by accident. I thought it would be quite boring, I had never opened the Securities Act \u2014 I thought securities law sounded dead dull, but wanted to get on my feet more and not be in a boardroom looking at documents for 12 hours a day.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linda Plumpton<\/strong>: I think all of our stories are about serendipity. When I think about how I got into competition law, I had two mentors earlier in my career \u2014 John Laskin and Kent Thomson \u2014 both of whom practiced in that area. As I started at the firm, there was a criminal trial under s. 45 of the conspiracy provisions of the Competition Act that was ongoing. We also happened to represent the defendants in the first two price-fixing class actions that were commenced at the cusp of a growing, novel area of practice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Catherine Beagan Flood:<\/strong>\u00a0I was very interested in public law. I came to Blakes because Peter Hogg is scholar in residence here and Paul Schabas is here, too. I\u2019ve been very lucky to be able to continue to do some of that work \u2014\u00a0I still get to write constitutional opinions with Peter and go to the Supreme Court with him. On the privacy side, when I first started as a litigator, I wasn\u2019t sure if I wanted to stay in private practice or become an academic. \u2026So, again, that serendipity of learning a new area of law when no one knew anything about it.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Canadian Lawyer:<\/em> What differences do you think women litigators face compared to male litigators?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Andrea Laing:<\/strong> Maybe one of the more distinct pressures we face is that we are outward facing \u2014\u00a0we go into court and we represent and are a proxy for our client and so profile and how you approach the court is very important. As a junior in a litigation practice, you are asking yourself: \u201cWhat is my style?\u201d You\u2019re looking for role models.<\/p>\n<p>I think one of the changes we\u2019re seeing is there is much more diversity of role models now, even if you look around this table there are many more acceptable ways to be a female litigator than there were 15 years ago.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reena Lalji<\/strong>: I\u2019m a client to external counsel, but I also have internal clients as well and what I find is in our litigation group there are four of us of which three are women so to me that\u2019s fantastic and we\u2019re all quite senior. One of the things I have found is that with in-house positions, I think generally there have historically been more women at junior levels and the senior levels tend to be men. I\u2019m seeing a shift in that and seeing more women in senior roles in legal but in particular in the business. I\u2019m finding at the bank there are fantastic senior women role models.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<blockquote>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>You can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canadianlawyermag.com\/author\/jennifer-brown\/leading-in-litigation-15197\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">read the full roundtable interview<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canadianlawyermag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Canadian Lawyer<\/a> magazine.<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n<div id=\"\">\n<div class=\"avatar ws1-ws2 d1-d2 t1 m-all\">\n\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/legalexecutiveinstitute.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Jennifer-Brown-200x200.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/div>\n<div class=\"vcard ws3-ws11 d3-d11 t2-t5 m-all\">\n<p class=\"author-name\"><strong>By: <a href=\"http:\/\/legalexecutiveinstitute.com\/author\/jennifer-brown\/\" title=\"Posts by Jennifer Brown\" rel=\"author\">Jennifer Brown<\/a><\/strong><br \/>Managing Editor, Canadian Lawyer InHouse and Law Times<\/p>\n<p class=\"author-bio\">Jennifer Brown is the managing editor of Canadian Lawyer InHouse magazine and Law Times. She has been a business magazine and newspaper writer and editor for more than 20 years. She is a graduate of Ryerson University\u2019s journalism program.<\/p>\n<p>Jennifer Brown is the managing editor of Canadian Lawyer InHouse magazine, a Thomson Reuters publication and part of the Canadian Lawyer\/Law Times Media Group. She has been a business magazine writer and editor for more than 20 years covering the information technology, occupational health and safety, and security sectors for the business-to-business press prior to arriving at InHouse. She was also a newspaper reporter for 10 years covering government, housing, health care and education. She is a graduate of Ryerson University\u2019s journalism program.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/legalexecutiveinstitute.com\/author\/jennifer-brown\" class=\"all-posts\">See all posts <span class=\"icon-arrow-right\"\/><\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bing.com\/news\/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&#038;aid=&#038;tid=9675FC6233034EFFB496728825B486CC&#038;url=http%3A%2F%2Flegalexecutiveinstitute.com%2F5-women-litigators-canadian-lawyer%2F&#038;c=10339638942545173771&#038;mkt=en-gb\">Source link <\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dominiclevent.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-19471\" src=\"http:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/litigation-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"350\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, Thomson Reuters\u2019 Canadian Lawyer magazine brought together a cross-section of leading women in litigation, from private practice and in-house, to talk about how they came into the profession they love, the challenges and rewards they\u2019ve faced, and the changes they have observed as they have risen to the positions they hold today. They discussed &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/leading-in-litigation-5-women-litigators-discuss-their-role\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Leading in Litigation: 5 Women Litigators Discuss Their Role&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","entry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Leading in Litigation: 5 Women Litigators Discuss Their Role - Dominic Levent Solicitors Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/leading-in-litigation-5-women-litigators-discuss-their-role\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Leading in Litigation: 5 Women Litigators Discuss Their Role - Dominic Levent Solicitors Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recently, Thomson Reuters\u2019 Canadian Lawyer magazine brought together a cross-section of leading women in litigation, from private practice and in-house, to talk about how they came into the profession they love, the challenges and rewards they\u2019ve faced, and the changes they have observed as they have risen to the positions they hold today. 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