Advocacy-Matters-Summer-2023
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CHAIR CHAT<br />
Chair Chat<br />
Steven Frankel (he/him), Davies Ward Phillips &<br />
Vineberg LLP<br />
I am delighted to take the reins as Chair<br />
of the newly-minted Mid-career Advocates<br />
Standing Committee (MASC). We still represent<br />
advocates who have 10 to 20 years of<br />
experience, but decided a re-branding was<br />
in order. As fond as we all were of the name<br />
“10+”, MASC just has a better ring to it.<br />
I could not be more excited about this<br />
Committee and what this term has in store<br />
for mid-career advocates. I am joined on the<br />
Executive by three amazing colleagues at<br />
the bar: Sonu Dhanju-Dhillon, Melanie Baird<br />
and Chris Lee. More generally, this Committee<br />
is stronger and more diverse than ever,<br />
with representation from British Columbia,<br />
Alberta, Quebec, Atlantic Canada and, of<br />
course, Ontario. Our Committee members<br />
have expertise across just about every type<br />
of law you can practise: criminal, Aboriginal<br />
and Indigenous, family, intellectual property—you<br />
name it. We look forward to bringing<br />
our experience and energy to bear in<br />
helping The Advocates’ Society carry out its<br />
mandate.<br />
The headline event of this term is Winter<br />
Summit: The Big Chill Ottawa, the inaugural<br />
retreat exclusively for members of TAS<br />
who are 10 to 20 years out from their call to<br />
the bar. We will be gathering together, with<br />
old friends and new, on February 1, 2 and<br />
3, 2024. Notwithstanding the irony of paying<br />
homage to a movie that was released when<br />
many lawyers in our age range were not even<br />
born (myself included!), this event is a cannot-miss.<br />
We have been trying to organize a<br />
retreat for mid-career advocates for years,<br />
and now we are finally doing it. Our terrific<br />
co-chairs—Jennifer Hunter, Brian Duong,<br />
Erin Durant and David Thompson—have<br />
been working away to make this the most<br />
fun and engaging experience it can be, with<br />
enriching programming and tons of opportunities<br />
to network. I encourage everyone<br />
to register and join us. We hope and expect<br />
that Winter Summit will become a biennial<br />
mainstay on TAS’s calendar.<br />
Although planning Winter Summit will occupy<br />
a considerable amount of our time and<br />
attention, we have a busy calendar throughout<br />
the entire term. We will be hosting<br />
three mentoring-related events (two with<br />
our friends at the Young Advocates Standing<br />
Committee); two events that will focus<br />
on critically important issues pertaining to<br />
equity, diversity and inclusion in the profession<br />
and how they affect advocates of our<br />
vintage; and an event for women litigators.<br />
In addition, we will be hosting a purely social<br />
event at a venue to be determined; after<br />
all, fostering collegiality among advocates<br />
is an important part of what we do. We will<br />
have more information about these events<br />
in the coming weeks and months. We hope<br />
to see as many people at our events, both<br />
in-person in Toronto and, for those events<br />
being held online, virtually.<br />
In the meantime, please enjoy this issue of<br />
<strong>Advocacy</strong> <strong>Matters</strong>. This is Megan Keenberg’s<br />
first issue as Editor-in-Chief and it is a great<br />
one. It features an interview with the new<br />
President of TAS, Dominique Hussey. Dominique<br />
is a force of nature and has big ideas<br />
for how to drive the Society forward. She is<br />
somehow managing to balance her leadership<br />
of TAS with a busy intellectual property<br />
litigation practice and her responsibilities as<br />
Managing Partner of the Toronto office of<br />
Bennett Jones. Megan has, in addition to editing<br />
the issue, contributed a column on an<br />
important topic: how to carve out time for<br />
ourselves and set appropriate boundaries<br />
for vacations. Speaking of quasi-vacations,<br />
the <strong>Advocacy</strong> <strong>Matters</strong> team has collected<br />
photos of the “summer offices” of a number<br />
of advocates. We hope you use them as inspiration.<br />
Finally, the summer issue would<br />
not be complete without photographs from<br />
End of Term Dinner, which was held on<br />
June 22, <strong>2023</strong>.<br />
I hope everyone enjoys some well-deserved<br />
time off. We will see you soon enough:<br />
our first event of the term will be in October.<br />
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