What an absolutely absorbing case. We must have spent six lawyer hours as a team drafting our 5 minutes of oral argument delivered absolutely flawlessly by the incomparable Sarah Rankin today.

I couldn’t possibly be more proud of her and the unbelievable talent she is showing for appellate advocacy – she is absolutely expert!

I’ve been genuinely blessed to have the opportunity to mentor Sarah and so many others – though I would say Carter mentors me more like for example – but still, these relationships are so meaningful for me and hopefully worthwhile to my friends and colleagues with whom I get to work so closely on these important cases.

We had a wonderful team and a beautiful day – as always, incredibly privileged to represent the advocacy organization extraordinaire, the Empowerment Council and the amazing Jennifer Chambers.

This team – Maya Shukairy, Sarah Rankin, Carter Martell and moi.

More about the case on my blog in this earlier post:

On Twitter / X

https://twitter.com/pouchbaby/status/1844439805742211075

WEBCAST IS NOW AVAILABLE HERE:

Sarah’s Spectacular Submissions start at 1:12:45 in the Webcast

https://www.scc-csc.ca/case-dossier/info/webcast-webdiffusion-eng.aspx?cas=40781

Another cool thing about this day in Court was that two amazing classmates – graduating class of 2014 from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law – Sarah Rankin and Caroline Senini made submissions back to back! Sarah for EC of course and Caroline for the Independent Criminal Defence Advocacy Society based in Vancouver, B.C. Caroline’s submissions were among the best in the batch! They start at around 1:18 on the webcast of the hearing. Here is a photo taken of the two superstars –who are also great friends — during our post-appeal debrief.

It is heart-warming in the extreme to see the next generation of young women taking their rightful place in leadership roles and shining on the biggest staged. I’ve been hugely invested in fostering the growth and retention of women in criminal defence for many years. Hence, WiCCD: https://linktr.ee/wiccd

So great to see Caroline Senini as an obvious emerging talent joining the ranks of the up and coming stars of tomorrow, today!

I have lots of thoughts on giving younger counsel opportunities to learn on their feet and succeed. As I said on LinkedIn:

I’ve argued more than 250 cases in Ontario’s Court of Appeal over the course of my 30+ years at the Bar. It’s an enormous privilege. I do like to argue my own appeals to keep myself sharp, but I’ve also made sure to mentor mostly young women in this regard. For intervener appearances of 5 minutes at the SCC, that challenge is unique. My own view is it’s tougher than 40 minutes or a full hour of oral argument. It’s the whole “sorry I didn’t have time to write a short letter” business. As much as possible I now prefer to support a younger colleague to make those submissions. I get more out of that process of working collaboratively and then sitting back to watch them soar. Sarah is a gift in that regard, as are Carter Martell, and M. Shukairy – THIS team!

While occasionally, for some sentimental or other reason I’ll still take my turn at the podium (as I did on Kahsai and am likely to do in December on J.W.), I find the approach we took on Bharwani and five other cases in the last three years anyway much more rewarding (and a LOT more relaxing -for me- on game day). I recommend it highly. Also: it’s amazing to me how few organizations and senior counsel let a younger colleague take the lead on cases where surely they can do it! Maybe they don’t realize that coaching and mentoring also builds skill-sets & is a ton of FUN!

Summing Up

Congrats to Sarah Rankin on her brilliant demonstration of how it’s done. A masterclass from her and from our whole team who — no joke – invested 6 hours in those five minutes. And well worth every minute for the finale! Fingers crossed for a W on this hugely important case.