Tomi Adebiyi, the new staff lawyer with the Queen’s Business Law Clinic, is ready to help student caseworkers learn and develop useful skills that will ultimately ensure their smooth integration into law practice.
Tomi Adebiyi, the new staff lawyer with the Queen’s Business Law Clinic, is ready to help student caseworkers learn and develop useful skills that will ultimately ensure their smooth integration into law practice. (Photo by Nicole Clark)

Nigerian native Tomi Adebiyi began her legal career in 2010 practising with one of her country’s leading business law firms. After completing her LLM in corporate/commercial law at McGill in 2015, she stayed in Canada first as an intake worker and then a student-at-law with Pro Bono Law Saskatchewan. Most recently she served as Human Rights Investigator with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission. Now she has brought her diverse experience to the Queen’s Business Law Clinic, where she will be supervising students as the QBLC’s new staff lawyer.

Three weeks into her new role, Tomi Adebiyi spoke with Queen’s Law Reports about her expertise, experience and the work she’ll be doing with the QBLC. 

What interests you most about providing legal services to small business startups, entrepreneurs, not-for-profit organizations and social enterprises?

For many of our clients, setting up a small business startup is their first step towards financial independence. For other clients, a desire to bring positive change to their society and contribute to their community is what drives them to seek to create either a not-for-profit organization, charitable organization or social enterprise. One major obstacle to achieve these goals, I find, is access to affordable legal services. Hiring a lawyer is expensive especially for a startup business or a not-for-profit organization and navigating the maze of regulations and acts relevant to the incorporation of a business organization is confusing without the guidance of a lawyer. Ultimately, these clients’ inability to obtain affordable legal advice may put an end to their dreams. Working at the Queen’s Business Law Clinic gives me the unique opportunity to be a part of our clients’ success stories. The ability to provide them the legal support needed to birth their dreams into reality is a privilege that I look forward to enjoying in the course of my work at the clinic. 

Tell us about your experience in dealing with intellectual property (IP) and technology law issues as an associate with Nigeria’s large business law firm G. Elias & Co.

I started my legal career as an associate of a top business law firm in Lagos, Nigeria. I worked at the firm for about three years. While working at the firm, I provided legal advice on trademarks registration, copyright issues and intellectual property acquisitions. Our firm managed the intellectual property portfolios of many banks, telecommunication companies and large businesses. This exposed me to a wide-range of IP and technology law issues flowing from mergers and acquisition transactions, as well as other corporate reorganizations. My interest in IP law led me to apply for a thesis-based LLM program at McGill University, where I focused my research on copyright compliance issues in the digital age. 

Tell us about your interest and experience in human rights law and pro bono work. 

My interest in pro bono work goes as far back as my undergraduate years in Nigeria. I completed a three-month internship at the Office of the Public Defender, Lagos State, during my fourth year at the university. This was my first exposure to the very real access to justice issues in my country. 

However, I also had a very strong interest in business law and after I was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2009, I chose to follow the business law path instead. But I was always drawn to pro bono work. 

After I completed my LLM and while I was completing my accreditation process with the National Committee on Accreditation, Federation of Law Societies of Canada, I got an incredible opportunity to work as an Intake Worker with Pro Bono Law Saskatchewan. I helped low-income individuals gain access to the legal advice, which they needed so much but were unable to afford. It was a very rewarding and humbling experience for me because of the gratitude expressed by these individuals who had been shut out of the legal system. It was also during this time that I first became interested in human rights and labour and employment issues. 

After I was called to the Saskatchewan Bar in 2018, I was offered a position as an investigator with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, where I helped investigate complaints filed by individuals on different issues ranging from discrimination on the basis of sex, race, creed, religion, sex (including pregnancy) and family status. 

What attracted you to the Queen’s Business Law Clinic? 

It is very rare for me to find an opportunity that brings together quite nicely all my previous legal experiences as a corporate-commercial associate and my work in a pro bono organization. This was my main attraction to the Queen’s Business Law Clinic. I was also attracted to the unique structure of the clinic as a clinical education course as well as the learning and development opportunities it offers to the 24 students registered in the course. I believe that what makes a great lawyer is his or her ability to transfer theoretical knowledge into practical skills useful to their clientele. The Queen’s Business Law Clinic creates such an environment for its students to learn and develop useful skills that ultimately ensure a smooth integration into law practice. 

What do you look forward to most as QBLC Staff Lawyer?

There is quite a lot to look forward to in my role as QBLC Staff Lawyer – mentoring opportunities,  ensuring the delivery of top-quality services to clients, working collaboratively with colleagues from the other four Queen’s Law Clinics, which are all conveniently located in a single location, to name a few. I am very excited to uncover all that the QBLC has to offer and to contribute positively to the development of the clinic.