Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner, David Wake, Law’72, with then-program director Tom Harrison, Law’01, PhD’16, and Dean Bill Flanagan before Wake’s 2017 McCarthy Tétrault Lecture. (Photo by Andrew Van Overbeke)
Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner, David Wake, Law’72, with then-program director Tom Harrison, Law’01, PhD’16, and Dean Bill Flanagan before Wake’s 2017 McCarthy Tétrault Lecture. (Photo by Andrew Van Overbeke)

Queen’s Law students will continue to learn legal ethics and professionalism of the highest standards, thanks to a $105,000 renewal of the McCarthy Tétrault LLP Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Program. For another three years, the firm will support all elements of its initial significant gift in 2014: an annual public lecture, two doctoral fellowships, expert panel presentations to first-year students, and a course prize.

“McCarthy Tétrault has been a leader in supporting legal ethics and professionalism at Queen’s Law,” says Dean Bill Flanagan. “I am most grateful for the firm’s ongoing and generous support of the school.”

First-year students gain insight into professional expectations and challenges right from orientation, when they have interactive discussions with experienced practitioners. 

JD students, all of whom take the core course in an upper year, have benefitted from a textbook subsidy, a course prize for the top students each term, and lectures by such expert guests as human rights lawyer Paul Champ.

The funding of two PhD students’ research is the aspect that advances scholarship. The first two Fellows – Thomas Harrison, Law’01, PhD’16 (Artsci’89, Ed’92), and Basil Alexander, PhD in Law candidate – studied such issues as access to justice, rule of law and the role of an independent Bar. Their results were presented at legal conferences in Canada and beyond, and produced peer-reviewed publications. 

“This program has been a vital and integral part of legal education at Queen’s,” says Tom Harrison, the original McCarthy Tétrault Fellow and program director. “It has also emphasized the significance of ethical and professional challenges that confront everyone in Canadian law today.”

The program is mutually beneficial, too, raising the profile of both firm and school. Through the marquee annual lectures, legal community leaders share professional insights and experiences with students. McCarthy lecturers have included Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Stephen Goudge (2015), Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell, Law’76, LLD’10 (2016), and most recently Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner, David Wake, Law’72, who spoke on “Conflicts for Lawyers, Judges and in the Public Service: Overlapping Legal and Ethical Challenges.” By attending these events, 50 local lawyers have earned Law Society credits toward Continuing Professional Development.  

So, thanks to McCarthy Tétrault’s investment, there’s already a “generation” of Queen’s Law graduates and a corps of practitioners with broader professional perspectives, proof of that hoped-for symbiosis – and more to come.

By Lisa Graham