Winners of the annual awards were celebrated at a gala in Toronto on Wednesday evening
At the sixth annual Canadian Law Awards on Wednesday evening, winners reflected on the circumstances that led to their achievements.
The gala at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre celebrated Canada’s most exceptional law firms, in-house legal teams, individual lawyers, deals, and cases across 28 categories.
Lewis Retik and Jacques Shore, partners at Gowling WLG, took home the Pro Bono Initiative of the Year for Operation Abraham, an initiative they co-founded to assist Afghan allies in escaping persecution from the Taliban.
When asked what they attribute their success to, Retik said, “Our work and taking risks.” He also commended Gowling, describing it as “a firm that has allowed us to bring out our humanity, recognizing that we are not in this world alone, but we must work with others.
“The law has given us a foundation to be able to do the best we can to improve the lives of others as well,” Retik added.
On the heels of being named Managing Partner of the Year, Danielle Robitaille of Henein Hutchison Robitaille LLP said being a leader in the legal profession is “about being responsive to the market and really understand[ing] what young lawyers are looking for long term in a career.”
She added that it also involved “being prepared to provide the kind of mentorship and leadership that they need to prosper in a way that generations before them have been able to.”
Cheryl Graden of TMX Group, who took home the Lawson Lundell LLP Award for Law Department Leader of the Year, noted that legal department leaders are business leaders as much as legal leaders.
“You need to stretch to the full extent of leadership skills,” she said.
“With our groups having expanded beyond law, beyond regulatory, beyond governance to things like corporate bonds to government affairs to procurement to sustainability… you are now leading multiple functions of an organization, and you have become all the more vital to the CEO, the C-suite, and also to the board.”
After Torys LLP won the LEAP Legal Software Award for Best Use of Technology in a Law Firm, Dustin Patterson, Torys’ director of innovation, attributed the firm’s achievement to “listening to our lawyers and our clients and our stakeholders, and focusing on what their real concerns and problems are and not getting distracted by the latest trends and technologies and shiny objects.”
But Sukesh Kamra, Torys' chief knowledge and innovation officer, said the firm also has “a culture unlike any other that allows us to actually bring innovative technology to the forefront.”
He added, “Our lawyers are open-minded, and they’re open to exploring and evaluating legal technology to make the practice of law very much more efficient than it was in the past.”
An independent panel of judges selected the winners of the Canadian Law Awards from a shortlist chosen by the awards team. Nominees from across the country travelled to Toronto for the celebrations.
See the full list of winners here and on the Canadian Law Awards website.
