Faculty of Law Year in Review 2020

Dean's year end message to U of T Law Community

As you look to celebrate the holiday season a bit differently this year, I wish to take this opportunity to share with you my annual look-back at another notable year at U of T Law. This is also an especially appropriate time for me to reflect on the recent past, as my time as Dean comes to a close at the end of this month. While I look forward to a return to full-time teaching and scholarship, I am grateful for the opportunity to have served this institution these past six years. I am also grateful for the support our community provides to the Faculty, several examples of which I will outline in this review.

I am delighted that University Professor Jutta Brunnée will begin a five-year term as Dean as of January 1, 2021. Prof. Brunnée is a distinguished scholar of international and environmental law and has received many honours in her field. She has previously served in various leadership positions at the Faculty, and has demonstrated exceptional administrative ability, insight, and a commitment to fostering inclusive excellence. Prof. Brunnée's achievements have already furthered the Faculty's place as the premier law school in Canada and I know that the Faculty will only get better under her leadership.

A law school year unlike any other
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on all our lives. Despite the challenges, our students, staff and faculty have shown resilience and determination in adapting to the ‘new normal’ of online learning under current pandemic restrictions. We began this academic year offering a hybrid model of in-person and virtual classes, remaining mindful of social distancing requirements while offering in-person instruction where possible. In mid-October, following updated guidance from the provincial government and University, we pivoted to an entirely online model of teaching. We remain hopeful that we will be able to return to our in-person offerings in 2021. In the meantime, I want to express my gratitude and deep appreciation for the community’s resolve and collaborative spirit in dealing with these unprecedented circumstances.

The student experience
When I started as Dean in January 2015, I hoped that we could enhance support for our students in a variety of ways. You have heard in past updates, for example, about the Faculty’s appointment of a mental health manager, as well as an embedded mental health counselor. Another key ambition was to make progress in supporting our students financially. I am deeply grateful to our alumni community for its critical support for the Faculty and the Campaign for Excellence Without Barriers. Here are some numbers that illustrate your impact.

Because of your generosity, the endowment for the Faculty has increased from $64 million in 2015 to $85 million today; when current pledges are fully paid, it will be $91 million. Much of this growth derived from the Campaign for Excellence Without Barriers, which focused on student financial aid. I am pleased and, again, grateful to report that the endowment's annual contributions to JD student financial aid have already doubled from $0.7 million annually in 2014-15, to $1.5 million today, and will have tripled to $2.2 million annually once current pledges are fully paid. What does this, along with greater Faculty investment in financial aid, mean for our students with financial need? As the data below reveal, for JD students with financial need that qualifies them for a bursary, there has been a 24% decrease in average effective tuition over the past six years.¹

¹The number of students eligible for bursaries varies year to year, and the program has also become more progressive, allocating more to needier students. Holding constant the number of students eligible for bursaries at 2020 levels, average effective tuition has fallen by 17% since 2014-15. Once current pledges are fully paid, on the other hand, average effective tuition will be 31% lower than in 2014-15 holding all other things equal, including the number of eligible students.

Ensuring financial access to the Faculty will remain a priority now and in the future, but the Faculty is deeply appreciative to our alumni and supporters for this recent progress. Combined with the Post-Graduation Debt Repayment Assistance Program – the first program of its kind at any Canadian law school – we are committed to ensuring that the best and the brightest can attend our Faculty.

On a related note, we strive to be a Faculty that provides a welcoming environment for racialized students, including Black and Indigenous students. In January, we launched the Black Future Lawyers (BFL) program, a collaboration between the U of T Black Law Students’ Association, Black law alumni and the Faculty to engage and support Black-identified undergraduates interested in studying law, as well as current Black law students. On the heels of the launch, BFL hosted its annual conference in February. In short order, U of T Black Law Students' Association received the well-deserved recognition of BLSA's Small Chapter of the Year Award.

We are grateful to the more than 90 legal community members who have embraced this program by mentoring students. There is a significant need for additional mentors as more students join BFL. You can read about why mentorship is an important part of this program from one of its co-founders, Marie Kiluu-Ngila (JD 2019) in our digital issue of Nexus.

Our Indigenous Initiatives Office (IIO) continues to provide support for Indigenous students by sharing Indigenous knowledge across our community through education and action-based events. For example, this year, the IIO supported our first-year JD students to deepen their cultural competency by assigning required reading and then leading discussion circles with the Faculty’s Elder-in-Residence, Elder Constance Simmonds. IIO manager and alumna, Amanda Carling (JD 2012) was recognized by Precedent magazine for devoting her career to driving systemic change.

The best and brightest students: JD, LLM, SJD and GPLLM
U of T Law welcomed another exceptional cohort of 212 JD students from a pool of approximately 2,200 applicants. While we do not admit solely on the basis of numbers, and therefore could increase these if we chose, our median LSAT score remains in the mid-nineties, and our applicants had a remarkable median GPA of 3.86 (out of 4.0). The Faculty conducts an annual self-reporting survey better to understand the diversity of our first-year class. For the current cohort, over half are women, 42% identify as a person of colour, and 28% were born outside Canada. Read the latest statistics on our Class of 2023 (PDF).

We continue to attract a global cohort to our master’s and doctoral programs. Nearly half of the LLM class is international, and 19 of our funded SJD students (years 1-3) hold prestigious external grants. Our exceptionally talented graduate students are making scholarly impact, including SJD candidate Jérémy Boulanger-Bonnelly who was awarded a trifecta of prestigious awards, including the Vanier CGS, the SSHRC doctoral award and was named a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar. In less than a decade our executive education program, the Global Professional LLM (GPLLM), has more than quadrupled from 26 students in 2011-12 to 120 in the current cohort. GPLLM students have an average of 10 years of prior work experience from a range of sectors including government and public service, consulting and professional services, real estate and healthcare, to name just a few.

Bringing the law to life Although we are not presently together, as we wish we could be, the school is still abuzz with co-curricular activity, student working group projects at our in-house centres and legal clinics, and innumerable (virtual) presentations, panel discussions and film screenings hosted by over 50 law student clubs. I hope that you have had the opportunity to join us for one of our many #UofTLawOnline webinars aimed at sharing various topics in law with our alumni and the wider legal community. You can watch the recordings of past sessions on our YouTube channel.

The Faculty has made strides in building experiential learning opportunities in recent years. Two new initiatives launched this year, thanks to a gift from the Hon. Henry N.R. "Hal" Jackman (JD 1956). The Investor Protection Clinic (IPC), led by inaugural director Ivy Lam (LLB 1997), provides free legal services and public legal education to members of vulnerable communities who are at risk of suffering harm, or may have suffered harm, relating to their investments. The IPC will also provide students with unique experiential learning opportunities, whether assisting clients with possible legal claims, commenting on regulatory or legislative proposals, or educating vulnerable communities. You can read more about the IPC's projects in the digital issue of Nexus.

The Hon. Mr. Jackman’s generosity also supports the Future of Law Lab. Led by inaugural director Joshua Morrison (LLM 2014) and faculty advisor Prof. Anthony Niblett, the lab will provide a broad range of opportunities for students, academics, lawyers and other professionals to explore the intersection of law, innovation and technology.

These new initiatives add to the 14 well-established public legal interest programs and legal clinics at U of T Law.

Our work in creating opportunities for our students goes beyond the academic year. Summer positions, research opportunities, and fellowships have grown significantly at this Faculty. For example, we now have six paid positions for our students at the Entrepreneurship Hatchery, a partnership with the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, where they offer advice and mentorship to start-up teams at the University. Fellowships also provide opportunity for our students to work on their own innovative business plan (the Blue J Legal/Future of Law Fellowship), and work with in-house counsel on pressing legal issues. When students’ ability to secure summer employment was jeopardized this past summer because of the pandemic, our professors generously offered their research funds to support 58 new research assistantships. JD/MBA student Temitope Ajibode declared this research opportunity to be a "lifesaver". You can read more about her experience in Nexus.

We benefit in many ways from our partnerships with other Faculties at the University. For example, we offer co-curricular programs such as Rotman@Law, an online collaboration with the Rotman School of Management. Also, in partnership with Rotman, our OnBoard externship now allows 10 JD students to be a part of an interdisciplinary classroom, and to be partnered with a local not-for-profit board.

Our annual Grand Moot will be held virtually next term (save-the-date: Thursday, January 28^th with Justice Sheilah Martin of the Supreme Court of Canada chairing the panel). U of T Law teams were successful in several competitive moots in the early months of 2020, from the Isaac Moot and Jessup Moot to the Wilson Moot, Walsh Family Law Moot, Fox Intellectual Property Moot, and Winkler Class Action Moot. A number of our students received recognition as top oralists, best factums and more, continuing a long tradition of top results in these categories.

Celebrating our alumni community
Our global network of 10,500 alumni span the legal profession and beyond. Our talented and engaged alumni have a wealth of experience and skills to share with our current students and I thank those who have taken part in our community as volunteers, whether joining us to meet newly admitted students at Welcome Day, taking part in our annual mentorship program, or by offering guest talks. While by no means does this even approach a comprehensive list, here are a few recognitions to highlight:

Supreme Court of Canada Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella (LLB 1970) received a national honour from Germany, the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit (with badge and star). The Honourable William C. Graham (LLB 1964) and Philip Michael Epstein (LLB 1968) were recently promoted and named to the Order of Canada. Alumna Melissa Kennedy (LLB 1987) received the leading global honour for general counsel and law departments from the Directors Roundtable. Bob Rae (LLB 1977) was appointed Canada's ambassador to the United Nations.

Our alumni award recipients were named this year: Dr. Maureen Kempston Darkes (JD 1973) and the Hon. Robert Sharpe (LLB 1970) are Distinguished Alumni Awardees, and Nader Hasan (JD 2006) and Atrisha Lewis (JD 2012) received the Wilson Prichard Award for Community and Professional Service. Congratulations to them, with whom we hope to celebrate in person when we can.

Our Advancement Office would love to hear of any awards or professional recognition received. Please reach out to alumni.law@utoronto.ca.

Alumni reunion understandably looked different this year with 175 alumni joining their classmates virtually. We also had the opportunity to host a special talk between long-time friends Prof. Arnie Weinrib (LLB 1965) and lawyer, writer and comedian Hart Pomerantz (LLB 1965).

Scholarly insight and academic rigour
The strength of an educational institution derives from its people, and our global reputation rests significantly on the teaching and scholarship of our professoriate. Our faculty received many notable honours this year. To name but a few, Prof. Jutta Brunnée was appointed to the title "University Professor" – the University’s highest and most distinguished academic rank; Prof. Gillian Hadfield was awarded the Mundell Medal from the Attorney General of Ontario for outstanding legal writing; Prof. David Dyzenhaus was named a Guggenheim Fellow; and Prof. Yasmin Dawood is the recipient of the JD Class of 2020 Mewett Teaching Award and was just named a recipient of the Legal Excellence Award from the South Asian Bar Association (SABA) of Toronto this month. Visit our website’s news section to read more news from the Faculty.

Sadly for the Faculty, Prof. Tony Duggan retired this past summer, and Prof. Michael Trebilcock is retiring at the end of 2020. Both are beloved teachers, mentors and scholars, with Prof. Trebilcock globally renowned as a founding scholar of the Law and Economics school (amongst many other things), and Prof. Duggan a commercial law leader in Canada and the Commonwealth. We will miss them both. Looking to the future, we are pleased that Abdi Aidid (LLM 2021), a Yale Law School JD graduate who is presently enrolled in our LLM class, will be joining us next summer as an Assistant Professor for an initial three-year term. He has served as an Adjunct Professor in our Legal Research and Writing Program, and as a mentor in the Black Future Lawyers program, and his scholarly and teaching interests relate to the legal profession. He will be a welcome addition.

Philanthropic support, bright futures
With government now providing only 13% of the Faculty’s budget, the support of alumni and friends continues to be critical to our success. Let me reiterate my gratitude for your outstanding support for the Excellence Without Barriers campaign, which not only ensures a brighter future for generations of law students with financial need, but has also supported the Faculty’s ongoing efforts in expanding experiential learning opportunities and student mental health and well-being. For many reasons, including the examples you set, your engagement with our students and faculty, and your financial support, our alumni are essential to our past, present and future success.

In closing, I am enormously grateful for the opportunity to have served as Dean of U of T’s Faculty of Law and for all the support the Faculty receives from our community. I wish you and your family a restful holiday season and a healthy and happy New Year.

Sincerely,

Edward Iacobucci (LLB 1996)
Dean and James M. Tory Professor of Law