Advocacy-Matters-Summer-2023

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