How Devin Persaud led the South Asian Bar Association during the legal profession's diversity shift

When Devin Persaud first got involved with the SABA, it wasn’t as a lawyer or even a board member – but as a student. “I won their Student of the Year Award at this annual SABA Gala… back in 2013, and promptly after that, they cancelled the Student of the Year award,” he says. Jokes aside, that experience sparked a commitment that spanned over a decade, culminating in his presidency from 2021 to 2024.

His tenure came at a time when leadership was needed most. The pandemic fractured traditional models of engagement, and Persaud found himself steering an organization through a storm of uncertainty. “The first was [challenge was] trying to figure out how we would provide programming to our members in a virtual capacity,” he says. But adapting wasn’t just about moving online – it was about reimagining the very purpose of the organization. As members began moving to the suburbs, SABA followed. “Now we’ve extended… to Peel Region, York Region, Scarborough. So as our membership has crawled more towards the suburbs, so have we.”

But the pandemic also revealed more urgent, personal challenges. “There was a rise in mental health issues amongst our membership, and also a rise in domestic violence,” he says. These weren’t abstract problems – they were showing up in real time within their community. “We raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for COVID relief, both in India and in Toronto,” he adds, describing a shift toward charitable fundraising and direct support that hadn’t been part of SABA’s operations before.

That evolution – from a networking group to something broader – reflected how both SABA and the profession were changing. “At first, SABA was clearly a networking organization meant to bring together… South Asian individuals across the bar, because there were not many,” he says. “Now our galas… can be well over 500 people… It's no longer serving [only] Bay Street articling students and new lawyers and partners. We are serving a wide array of sole practitioners… foreign-trained lawyers… and we’ve been pretty adept at providing programming that assists all members from all walks of life.”

The diversity of SABA’s membership had grown, but the profession still didn’t reflect the city’s demographics. “Toronto… may be [around] 50 percent .. individuals who are… ‘racialized’… but that’s not reflected in our profession,” he says. A study commissioned by SABA with Blink Equity made that starkly clear. “The data is telling us… we’re nowhere near equity.”

He doesn’t hesitate when asked about some of the things standing in the way. “There was a certain slate of candidates who wanted to, ‘end wokeness and end diversity and inclusion programs’,” he says, referencing the Law Society of Ontario bencher elections in 2019. That pushback mirrored trends in the US, where law firms had been targeted for offering diversity scholarships. The Trump administration “basically threaten to pull contracts, government contracts for any law firm that issues a diversity scholarship, for instance, or just tries to level the playing field.”

Persaud wasn’t interested in vague calls for change. He wanted law firms to confront the uncomfortable parts of their own cultures, advising them to “talk and speak very frankly and openly. Maybe have anonymous town hall[s] with their diverse candidates… and say, ‘Is there something in the culture here that bothers you?’” he says. That kind of honest internal audit, he believes, is essential. Firms should be asking “Is there a way we can make this place more hospitable and somewhere where you would like to work for the rest of your life?”

His advocacy didn’t stop at events and reports. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, SABA helped launch a Racial Justice Task Force. “We wanted to ensure that South Asians were being better allies to the Black community,” he says. It meant putting a mirror up to their own community. “In order to help others, you first have to look inward and work on yourselves.” The task force now tackles colourism and caste-based discrimination and offers unconscious bias training across North America.

That internal work was echoed in SABA’s Student Liaison Program. “That program is very near and dear to my heart,” he says, calling back to his own start as a student. The program did more than hand out plaques. It offered real money – bursaries up to $1,000 – and real responsibilities, connecting law students directly to SABA’s operations. “If you want great leaders… you’ve got to be the one responsible for building that pipeline.”

It all took time – and lots of it. As a partner at Miller Thomson, Persaud knows the tension between billing hours and building communities. “It’s hard to work a full-time job and also do a ton of extracurricular stuff on the side… especially when you've got a family and young kids,” he says. But for him, the payoff was more than personal fulfillment. “I’ve developed my network… more than 2,000 SABA lawyers in Toronto, and then more than 20,000 SABA lawyers across North America and even Europe.”

SABA had also become a platform for integrating his professional expertise. “I put forward a proposal to start a competition, antitrust and foreign investment section within SABA North America,” he says. That proposal turned into speaking engagements across the continent – from San Francisco to Atlanta – where he merges advocacy with subject-matter expertise.

Looking ahead, Persaud has no illusions about the challenges still to come. “Firms are becoming more reluctant to participate in DEI activities because they don’t know what repercussions it can have,” he says, describing the chilling effect in the US. But Canada is behind the US in other ways, such as data – or the lack of it. “We need… firms willing to provide metrics and data about how we’re doing with diversity. We need government to do that.

“If we can get to that stage of openness and transparency, that would be ideal.”

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