Best Lawyers In Canada

Pascale Fournier

Professor & research chair, legal pluralism and comparative legislation, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, Ottawa, Ont. Fournier has achieved international fame for her groundbreaking work on sex, faith, and the legislation, using fieldwork interviews with women from several countries to highlight the complex interplay between religious and secular law. She's received numerous national and global awards and nominations in 2014. Fournier became a fellow of the prestigious International Women's Forum for her role as a pioneer in the legal profession; receiving the Canada-Arab Chamber of Commerce Award for academic excellence and contribution to humankind. Fournier represented the University of Ottawa as an effective pioneer at the Governor General's Canadian Leadership Conference and has been unanimously appointed by the National Assembly of Quebec into the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission. What voters had to say: Superb mind, according [to] Harvard's Prof. Kennedy.

Alice Woolley

Professor and associate dean-academic, University of Calgary Faculty of Law, Calgary, Alta. Woolley is a true changemaker in the region of law and technology as well as law regulation. She's been a valuable member of the Canadian Bar Association's ethics and professional responsibility committee. Her job with the CBA Futures job as an ethics and regulatory problems staff member is truly making a mark in the legal community. Woolley is responsible for sweeping educational changes as chairwoman of the committee that developed and embraced significant curricular changes in the University of Calgary's Faculty of Law, which focus on the practical elements of legal education and will come into effect in September. What Republicans needed to say: Leading expert on legal profession and ethics; once she talks, people listen. Alice is a visionary. Educating law students in a means that will prepare them for a 21st century clinic is of critical importance to the future of our profession, immigrate to canada as investor.

Fred Headon

Assistant general counsel, labor and employment law, Air Canada, Montreal, Que. As chairman of the Canadian Bar Association's Futures Initiative, Headon has contributed over 25 presentations to lawyers, law professors, professors, librarians, law firm personnel, and regulators from Toronto to Buenos Aires, Victoria to Halifax, in person and online. The Futures report has been released in August 2014 and its own recommendations put Headon squarely in the midst of several vital discussions on subjects crucial to the profession. He continues to lead the Futures steering committee as it now turns its guidelines into action. Headon is an integral part of the debate about the future of this profession and he had been the very first in-house counsel to become the president of the CBA. What voters had to say: Brings energy and decency and the smarts to what he does.

Justice Murray Sinclair

Chairman, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Winnipeg, Man. A rare write-in candidate winner for this season 's Best 25, Sinclair was on the list this past year, making headlines again in June with the launch of this overview of the report of the TRC along with 94 recommendations to remedy the cultural genocide of Canada's residential college system. Over six decades, Sinclair led the TRC hearing the stories of over 7,000 survivors of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse. Sinclair, that was the first aboriginal judge in Manitoba, was initially appointed to the provincial court in which he became associate chief in 1988 and then elevated to the Court of Queen's Bench at 2001. He was co-commissioner of Manitoba's Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in 1988 and presided over a 2000 inquest into the deaths of 12 babies at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre. Sinclair hopes to finish the commission's full report in the not too distant future, after which he will choose whether to go back to retire or court and advocate for indigenous rights fulltime.