Alumna enjoying opportunities as a Supreme Court clerk

Lauren Wihak, Law '08, at the Supreme Court of Canada in May 2010

While many law students and lawyers would consider it a highlight of their budding career to clerk at one court, Lauren Wihak, Law ‘08, has had the credentials to be able to clerk at two appellate courts. Having completed her articles in her home province as a clerk at the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal (SKCA) in 2008-2009, she is currently clerking for Justice Louis LeBel at the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC).  

Wihak says that while her work at the SCC is sometimes very similar to her work at the SKCA, she finds significant differences between the two experiences. She also notes that her first clerkship was excellent preparation for her second because she was already comfortable discussing and debating legal issues with appellate judges.

As she sees it, the SKCA has a very different function from the SCC – the former being mostly error correction and statutory interpretation, with only a very limited jurisprudential role, whereas the SCC’s role is almost entirely jurisprudential. “While the tasks assigned to me at both courts are often the same,” she explains, “the way I must approach them, and the cases heard by the courts themselves, are often different. In this sense, clerking at both levels of court has given me a great perspective on the division of labour in the Canadian judicial system and will make me a much better advocate in the long run.”

One of the biggest changes Wihak has encountered moving to the SCC is working for one judge instead of three or more.

“Working for three judges is like working for three senior partners in a law firm,” she says of the SKCA. “They all have different personalities, styles, requests and expectations. You have to be able to balance those, in addition to their different timelines and due dates.”

In Saskatchewan, she often had the opportunity to work with and for judges to whom she was not necessarily assigned. She had just two other clerks as colleagues, and they were not always working on the same cases together. In contrast, Lauren notes that at the SCC she only has to “manage the expectations” of one judge, and there are 26 other clerks. “That means a larger network of colleagues my age to both socialize and discuss cases with,” she says.

She finds herself participating in some of the most important cases and legal issues in the country, spending time with and learning from Justice LeBel. “He is a prolific writer who’s interested in and engaged with a wide range of legal issues,” she says, “and I am really enjoying the opportunity to work with him and to discuss all manner of legal issues.”

Wihak credits her time at Queen’s Law with helping prepare her well for her time as a clerk.
“The degree of intellectual rigour expected by my professors – both in assignments and in class – prepared me for the intensity of my two clerkships,” she says. “I felt confident that I could take a position on legal issues and defend them thoroughly, respectfully and thoughtfully.”

Many of her seminar courses also allowed her to hone her research skills and continuously improve her writing abilities. “These skills have proven to be invaluable to me over the past two years,” she adds.

Neither her professors nor fellow students are surprised by her success. Lauren Wihak’s time at Queen’s Law saw her earn several academic awards, including the Dean’s Key, serve as a senior editor of Queen’s Law Journal, and work as a tutor and a research assistant. A student paper she wrote was published in a well-regarded academic journal: The Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice. This combination of experiences made her a natural fit for her subsequent court roles.

While she originally contemplated doing a master’s degree immediately after her clerkships, she has now decided to go into practice instead. Starting in October, she will be joining Heenan Blaikie in Ottawa, working in the litigation practice group headed by now-retired SCC Justice Michel Bastarache. “As I am interested in many different fields of law, and ultimately see myself as a generalist,” she says, “practising this type of litigation will allow me to work on files touching on many different fields of substantive law.” Having a mentor like the Supreme Court’s Justice LeBel has surely helped her prepare for that.