I say this every August, but this is my favourite time of the year at
Canadian Lawyer as we present the annual Top 25 Most Influential. The Top 25 process starts early in the spring with the call going out for nominations. This gives me a chance to reach out to last year’s honourees as well as touch base with leaders of law organizations and firms around the country, who almost always have some peers with wonderful achievements to highlight. This year, I was extremely pleased the first nomination that came in, after I sent out an editor’s note in our weekly
Canadian Legal Newswire, was from a lawyer in Washington State who had a colleague he worked with in Canada and felt she was worthy of nominating.
All in all, almost 120 nominations came in — some with just a few words of praise and others with multi-page records of achievements. I looked over every single one and along with our internal writers and editors from the
Canadian Lawyer/Law Times team winnowed them down to the 100 who met the criteria — essentially having specific examples of leadership and influence in law,
business, and society over the previous 18 months. And all those accomplishments are always amazing.
Even the nominees who didn’t make it into the Top 25 deserve kudos for the work they’ve done for the profession and with their communities. Some of them may be more well known than others and some are more controversial figures than others but all have great stories to tell and I wish we could fit them all in.
This year after publically posting a poll of all 100 nominees, 6,100-plus votes came in — more than we’ve ever had before and with many of the voters giving us their two cents (or often more like a toonie’s worth of their opinions) about their picks. She has not been on the list for a few years but 2014’s top vote getter was Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin with almost 2,000 votes — light years ahead of the numbers for anyone else. It may have been the timing of the poll — which was right after the kerfuffle between her and Prime Minister Stephen Harper over the appropriateness of a phone call she made to his office during the early days of the selection process of a new SCC judge — or it could just be the profession and Canadians in general hold the chief in high regard. Either way, there’s no denying she continues to speak out on and promote issues of importance to both the profession and the public, including access to justice, maintaining women in the profession, and ensuring a diverse bench and bar that reflects our society. All that on top of her day job running a court that has been involved in some extremely high-profile cases in the past year and half.
There will undoubtedly be disagreement about some of the choices and grumblings about certain communities or areas of the country not being included. I welcome all feedback, positive and negative, as we go forward with the Top 25. I wholeheartedly encourage lawyers from every part of the country and in every area of practice to nominate worthy candidates for 2015’s Top 25. As we can’t be everywhere, it’s only with the participation of our readers that we are able to recognize the best and brightest, the movers and shakers in the profession. So don’t be shy — nominate!
If you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch with me at
[email protected].
