voidpunlc

[voidpunlc]

[voidpunlc]

[voidpunlc]

[voidpunlc]

Top Lawyers In Canada In 2020

Pascal Paradis

Executive director, Lawyers Without Borders Canada, Quebec City, Que.  Also back for his second time around the Top 25, Paradis is an unstoppable force and a fervent advocate for human rights, particularly for women and kids.  Thanks to Paradis' initiative, the Quebec bar joined LWBC to act as international counsel in favour of Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger condemned to jail and flogging for his comments criticizing the regime.  Since January 2015, Paradis and LWBC are leading a consortium of Canadian organizations working to get a wide-range five-year job to foster justice.  They plan to execute means of balancing and prevention for women victims of sexual abuse and other individuals affected by the Malian armed battle.  He also discusses several international conferences on human rights issues. What Republicans needed to say: He's left a very profitable position in a large federal law firm to go LWBC for quite a compact paycheque because he followed his heart and his enthusiasm.

Mark Tamminga

Partner, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP, Hamilton, Ont. Tamminga has devoted his career to automating lawful practices.  His information technologies focus began in 1986 while he was a law student and has been given the job of systemizing the production environment for files.   Since then, Tamminga's aptitude for legal technology has only grown with Gowlings LLP.  Three decades back, he had been called Gowlings' Innovation Initiatives leader.  He is in charge of automating the Gowlings recovery services practice.  He has designed and built a number of additional training systems in the areas of debt collection, loan positioning, and civil litigation.  His role has demanded re-thinking that the thornier aspects of big business operations: managing cultural change, inducing client-side believing, and building the compensation mechanics, which drive new behavior. What the panel had to say: Tamminga has shown real vision in tackling tough issues that many law firms aren't quite prepared to take on.

Allison Dellandrea

Crown counsel, Ministry of the Attorney General,Toronto, Ont.   Dellandrea has been a key participant in advancing the understanding of crimes against children by law enforcement officers, fellow attorneys, and the judiciary.  She had been included in a child sexual abuse case in March in which Ontario's former deputy education minister Ben Levin pleaded guilty to child pornography related fees.  The fees included making composed child porn, counseling a person to commit a sexual assault, and possession of child porn.  Dellandrea's role as a Crown includes function as instruction lead for Ontario's provincial strategy on Internet crimes against children.  She's a worthy pioneer in this area within the justice department. What Republicans needed to say: Allison is a tireless resource and is the penultimate legal mind to get a prosecutorial place on all things related to child exploitation and sexual assault offences.  For such a difficult subject that inherently entails quite taxing emotional and legal issues, Allison always has time to offer sound advice to other Crowns prosecuting these very difficult and sensitive offences.  Her efforts have made a tangible difference in making our society safer.

Justice Ian Nordheimer

Judge, Ontario Supreme Court, Toronto, Ont.  Nordheimer's name is becoming synonymous with class action suits mostly due to his ruling, which overturned Justice Edward Belobaba's decision in a high-profile situation on carriage in the Barrick Gold class action suit.  Nordheimer granted the losing coalition of law firms leave to appeal Belobaba's decision in the Divisional Court.  He's likely the most influential Superior Court degree judge in the country with a decade on the seat and produces perhaps the greatest number of thorough judgments each year in comparison to any trial level estimate.  He's famous for his quick wit and sharp conclusions.  In the last year, Nordheimer has made quite a splash in the legal community by upholding a professional field punishment for current LSUC bencher Joe Groia and releasing information that revealed Rob Ford was the topic of a police investigation.What the panel had to say: He is the kind of judge that must be on the Court of Appeal... or higher.  A judge of absolute integrity.

Jean-Pierre Blais

Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Ottawa-Gatineau Blais isn't afraid of criticism and is willing to go above and beyond in the name of customer rights.  A new CRTC decision provides consumers more freedom to choose TV stations of their liking as part of their satellite and cable subscriptions regardless of bitter opposition from Canada's cable companies.  Blais called out former Bell Media president Kevin Crull, without naming names, over reports Crull told CTV news personnel to not interview him after that decision.  Crull ended up apologizing for interfering in the news gathering process and later resigned.  From telemarketers to telcos, Blais always intends to encourage the rights and needs of customers. What Republicans needed to say: Reaching big shift with consumer-minded focus.  About time!