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Faculty of Law
401 Sunset Avenue
Windsor, ON Canada N9B 3P4
(519) 253-3000 ext. 2925
fax: (519) 973-7064
uwlaw@uwindsor.ca


© Copyright 2012
University of Windsor



Address to the First Year Class
Dean Bruce Elman
September 5th, 2006.


Good Afternoon. Welcome to the University of Windsor Law School!

I know I speak on behalf of our Faculty, Staff, and our returning 2nd and 3rd year students, when I say that we know you will find the study of law here at Windsor to be interesting, fulfilling, inspiring, and even, on occasion, enjoyable.

I am beginning my seventh year as Dean of the University of Windsor Law School. Each year has been an exciting adventure and I am sure that, with the addition of you the members of the Class of ‘09 this year will be just as stimulating and energizing as previous ones.

I want to share a few thoughts with you today.

My first observation is this: you are extremely privileged to have been admitted to a great law school! The University of Windsor Law School has, throughout its history, been in the forefront of innovation in legal education. This law school has been led by great individuals who were dedicated to excellence in legal education. The portraits of the past deans of this school are displayed in our Conference Room. I urge you to go and see them. Our founding dean was Mark MacGuigan who went on to serve as Minister of Justice for Canada and, later, as a Justice of the Federal Court of Canada. Walter Tarnopolsky, our second dean, went on to be a renowned civil liberties advocate and, later, an internationally respected jurist, serving with great distinction on the Ontario Court of Appeal. After serving as our dean, John MacLaren, became the first Dean at the University of Calgary and now holds a Chair in Legal History at University of Victoria. Last year, Dean MacLaren was honoured by the Canadian Bar Association with the Ramon Hnatyshyn Award for his contributions as a scholar, author, and teacher. Ron Ianni became President of this University and, after his untimely death, our building was deservedly named in his memory. Neil Gold, now the Provost of the University of Windsor, whom you have just heard from moments ago, has championed the cause of better teaching in law schools, not only here in Canada but around the world. He was recently honoured by the Law Society of Upper Canada with one of its highest honours – the Law Society Medal. Juanita Westmorland - Traore, now a Judge of the Quebec Court, received the Canadian Bar Association’s Bertha Wilson Touchstone Award for her contributions to promoting civil justice and equality. These individuals are a hard act to follow but I am fortunate that former Dean Jeff Berryman and Acting Deans Brian Mazer and Julio Menezes continue to be active members of the Faculty and sources of excellent counsel to me.

This Law School is fortunate to have an extraordinary community of dedicated legal scholars. I obviously do not have time to describe for you the innovative and expansive array of scholarly projects, in which my colleagues are involved, but I can assure you that the professors at this Law School are engaged in cutting edge, fundamental research which will not only influence policy making on both a provincial and national scale as well as affect the way law is practised, but will also enhance your legal education at Windsor Law. I hope that, over the next three years, you will become more familiar with their work. Perhaps you might even become involved in this work as a research assistant. As well, the professoriate at this Law School is comprised of truly excellent teachers and they are most ably assisted, in the delivery of the curriculum, by an extraordinarily accomplished group of sessional instructors.

The remarkable idea that past and current deans and Faculty members at this institution have shared is that it is the role of the Law School to enable its graduates to transform the “Theory” of Law into the “Practice” of Law and by the “practice of law” I mean it in its most expansive sense. To that end, Windsor Law has been among the leaders in this country in establishing clinical and experiential learning programs for its students. You will have the opportunity to participate in our two legal aid clinics, Legal Assistance Windsor and Community Legal Aid, or in our Mediation Service, the first university - based mediation service in the country. Our Northwest Territories Clerkship Program is unique in Canada. You can participate in our extensive mooting program or volunteer with Pro Bono Students Canada or apply to be a Social Justice Fellow. I hope you will avail yourselves of all of these opportunities to enhance in a practical way your legal education. In second and third year, you can enroll in our experiential based courses such as the Advanced Business Law Seminar, Succession and Estate Planning, Civil and Criminal Trial Advocacy, Labour Arbitration, Constitutional Litigation and our newest offering, Insolvency and Restructuring.

So Observation One is that you are embarking on a legal education at a very fine Law School. We, the Faculty and Staff, are justifiably proud of our Law School and we trust you will be as well.

Observation Two is that you are, arguably, the most highly qualified class of first year law students in Canada this year! There is no other first year class in the country that has had so much time, energy, and resources spent on its selection. We pride ourselves on our individualized Admission process. Our Admissions process is based upon the philosophy that, from the moment students apply to this Law School, they should be treated as individuals, each with a unique background and each with unlimited potential. As you know, undoubtedly better than I, the Windsor Admissions process is a very time consuming and labour-intensive one, but we think that it is well worth it. You, no doubt, think so as well. But I want to be clear about this: admission to this Law School does not guarantee success at this law school. There is no entitlement to A’s here. We have an obligation at this law school, which we share with every other law school in the country: we are obliged to do our part to protect the public from incompetent lawyers. We take this obligation seriously and we require you to demonstrate your competence before you graduate from our Law School. We will do our utmost to ensure that you have the knowledge and skills to do well but, ultimately, it comes down to your effort, your hard work, your diligence and your commitment.

As you will come to recognize, the Admissions process produces an interesting and diverse student body of whom we are justifiably proud and of which you are now an important part. Furthermore, when you gained admission to the University of Windsor Law School, you became part of a rather special community. The students, staff, and faculty represent, collectively, an extraordinary array of religions, cultures, ethnic and linguistic groups with an equally amazing collection of life and occupational experiences, as well as a broad spectrum of personal and political philosophies. Let me provide you with a bit of a snapshot of the Class of 2009. The Class of 2009 is 43% male and 57% female and the average age is about 24.40 years. Your classmates come from almost all of Canada’s ten provinces as well as a number of American states. You have been educated at plethora of colleges and universities and have obtained a wide variety of degrees – at the bachelors level and the graduate level, as well as other professional degrees. The Class of 2009 has degrees in Arts and Science, Fine Arts, Commerce and Business Administration, Engineering, Human Kinetics, Social Work, Education, and even Dentistry. You speak a dizzying array of languages: French, Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, Indi, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, German, Polish, Italian, Korean, American Sign Language, Pashto, Persian, Urdu, Japanese, Portuguese, and Yiddish. We have the makings of a fair sized symphony orchestra in the Class but we could also put together a few jazz ensembles and a rock band or two. This year we seem to have attracted a great many individuals who are proficient in the martial arts – judo, karate, boxing, wrestling, Tae Kwon Do, and kickboxing – as well as an equal number of dancers – ballet, jazz, tap, ballroom, hip hop, and Highland. And, of course, some of you are dancers who are proficient in the martial arts. You play, apparently with great proficiency, a wide range of sports from basketball and tennis to football and rugby to swimming and gymnastics to ocean kayaking, mountain biking, lacrosse, and squash to golf and ultimate Frisbee. I am also fairly certain that I can put together a team of “more than recreational” hockey players that would give last year’s Canadian and U.S. Olympic Teams a run for their money. Many of you have held full-time jobs before coming to Law School: some in the private sector, others in the public sector, and still others in the volunteer sector. And you have participated in tremendous amount of volunteer work here in Canada and around the world. Here is a smattering: Directing junior sports programs, Coaching sports teams, tutoring children, participating in college-based peer advisor programs, volunteering with the Elizabeth Fry Society, the Red Cross, AIDS Committees, the John Howard Society, Big Brothers and Sisters, Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, The Run for the Cure, St. John Ambulance Brigade, Amnesty International, Food Banks, young offender facilities, police liason committees, fair trade committees, Holocaust Remembrance Committees, Dragonboat races, community and religious organizations and institutions, and political parties at all levels and in both Canada and the United States. Ours is, and has always been, a community which respects and welcomes diversity and which provides a caring and nurturing environment for students to reach their maximum potential. We hope that you will become full participants in our community and its life.

Much of the excellent sense of community is created and fostered by our support staff. These individuals the general office staff, the secretarial staff, our Career Services and Alumni Development staff, and our clinical staff give so much support to our students, to the faculty and to Windsor Law as an institution.

The third point I want to impress upon you is that today you are entering a truly admirable profession regardless of the way the media likes to portray us. Lawyers have a terrible image these days. There have been a number of very high profile cases in recent years wherein members of the legal profession and even law students have not behaved in an ethical and professionally responsible manner. Although there are some lawyers who do not conduct themselves in a proper manner, the image of the greedy, uncaring, scheming, a-moral lawyer is also a myth.

We, on this Faculty, take ethical matters very seriously. In my opinion, the vast majority of lawyers are, contrary to urban mythology, absolutely scrupulous in their ethical conduct. This is also what we expect from you both as students and later as practicing lawyers that you conduct yourselves in an absolutely scrupulous manner, both professionally and personally. I cannot emphasize this enough. This faculty views your three years here at this Law School as part of your ongoing obligation to refrain from unethical and unprofessional conduct and to uphold the highest ideals of the legal profession.

The legal profession is a helping profession and a caring profession. I believe strongly that it is a privilege to be a member of the legal profession. About six years ago, the Canadian Lawyer Magazine ran an article loosely entitled “Ten Lawyers Who Make a Difference”. In the end, the magazine actually highlighted 11 lawyers including a husband and wife team. To the credit of this Law School, of the 11 lawyers featured in the article, four were graduates of Windsor Law. The article lauded these individuals for being caring and helpful individuals, both in their professional as well as their volunteer lives. The truth is that Canadian Lawyer could have found 100 lawyers who meet these criteria; indeed in my opinion, they could have probably found 1000's. I personally know countless numbers of lawyers who serve on boards and executives of community organizations of all sorts in numbers out of all proportion to our numbers in society. They serve in lay leadership roles in churches and synagogues, hospitals and nursing homes, symphony orchestras and opera societies, theatre companies, libraries and art galleries, police commissions, sports teams, both amateur and professional, and a host of foundations and other charitable undertakings. I have always been profoundly proud to be a member of the legal profession.

My fourth and final observation is that you will have tremendous opportunities to use the knowledge and skills you acquire here at Windsor Law. I was having lunch in New York with one of our Alumni. When I told him that I would be speaking to the first year class, he said: “Tell them that their opportunities are limited only by their imagination.” In three years time, when we hopefully will gather together at your Convocation, a member of the 25th Anniversary Class will address Convocation and welcome you as a member of the Windsor Law Alumni. The Class of 1984 provides a good example of the varieties of careers that individuals have pursued with their Windsor Law degree. Probably the most recognized member of the Class of ’84 is John Bitove. John is President and CEO of Canadian Satellie Radio which controls XM Satellite Radio. He is the founder and driving force behind S’Cool Life Fund – a charitable entity. He is best known as the person who founded the Toronto Raptors and was the volunteer president of the Toronto’s bid for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Other members of the class are employed by Government; Municipal, Provincial, and Federal, or by quasi-governmental agencies. For example, Julia McIlraith is Legislative Counsel with Justice Canada, Elizabeth McGuire, Frank Schwalm, Randy Seminiuk, John Skowronski, and Walter Costa are all Crown Attorneys with the Ministry of the Attorney General, Elaine Buckstein is with the City of Mississauga and Dave Mounteer is with the City of London, Bruce Manson is with Legal Aid Ontario while Charinee De Silva, Leslie Flemming, and Carol McDermott are all with Community Legal Aid Clinics, Frank Carlone is with the CAW Legal Services Plan, and Pam Hillen is with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. In the University sector, Sheila Devine is the Director of Student Recruitment at Memorial University and Jim Cooke is the University Counsel here at the University of Windsor. A number of members of the class are employed as legal counsel to corporations including Wayne Lipton, Vice President and Senior Counsel at Stewart Title Guaranty Company, Graeme McPhail, Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Rogers Communications, and William Sullivan who is International Tax Manager at Verizon Inc. Robert Govaerts is Chairman of the Board of the Amsterdam Trust Company in Amsterdam. In more traditional legal practice, members of the Class of 1984, are senior partners in the major firms in Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, and Windsor. It would take me a great deal of time to go through a whole list of those practicing with the large Bay Street Law firms in Toronto: Margaret Nelligan with Aird and Berlis, Elizabeth Mitchell with Koskie Minsky, Brent Hollis with McMillan Binch, Phil Brown with Torys, Justin Fogarty with Bennett Jones, George Karayannides with Heenan Blaikie, Howard Burshstein with Torkin Manes, and Allan Gelkopf with Blakes are a few. In Calgary, Robert Rooney is at Bennett Jones. In Ottawa, Warren Creates is at Perley Robertson. In Hamilton, Mark Sazio is at Ross McBride while Tom Robson is at Harrison Pensa in London. In Windsor, Pat Speight is with Sutts Strosberg and Gerri Wong is at Martini Barile. Gerri will be teaching both Family Law and Civil Trial Advocacy this year. She was one of those 11 lawyers identified some six or seven years ago by the Canadian Lawyer Magazine as the “Lawyers Who Make a Difference”. And Joe Wener is with Miller Canfield, a cross-border law firm with offices in both Detroit and Windsor. Another member of the Class, Curtis Fedoruk, is both a doctor and a lawyer and practises medicine here in Windsor. And these are just a few members of one class the class that sat where you are sitting 25 years ago.

You are students in an excellent law school and in three years you will be graduates. At that time, you will be privileged to join the ranks of a very accomplished group of graduates the Windsor Law Alumni. Your horizons should be unlimited both in terms of your future occupation and in terms of your geographical location. But I can guarantee that wherever you go and whatever you do, you will encounter Windsor Law alumni.

I hope that over the next three years, while you are students, and after that, when you are alumni that we together will continue Windsor’s tradition of staff and faculty who are concerned about, and interested in, the welfare of their students and alumni and who care about the welfare of their Law School. So, on behalf of the staff, faculty, students, and alumni, I want to welcome you to a life-long association with the University of Windsor Law School!