In 1979, I left Osgoode Hall Law School, law degree in hand, excited and anxious about an uncharted career ahead. Thirty five years later, I am back at Osgoode, honoured to be selected as a Roy McMurtry Clinical Fellow.
From January 13 to February 7, I will be at Osgoode full time, eager to add to your legal education, and to learn as much as I can.
I want to meet as many of you as possible, to deliver as many law lectures as time permits, and to toss around ideas on your legal education, future careers, and the law itself. Please feel free to introduce yourself and to chat, in my Osgoode office (Room 3048) or around the school.
Contrary to popular myth, we blind folks don’t recognize all voices we’ve ever heard. I encourage you to just identify yourself. You can easily pick me out in a crowd, white cane in hand.
So why return to Osgoode? For three decades I have been a public sector litigator, at all levels of court and before diverse administrative tribunals. I have appeared some 30 times in the Supreme Court.
Since 1982, I have held three successive jobs in Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General. From 1982 to 1987, I cut my teeth in civil and administrative law litigation in the Crown Law Office Civil. I also got my feet wet in some of the earliest Charter litigation. Then, from 1988 to 1993, I concentrated on constitutional litigation, as counsel in the Ministry’s Constitutional Law Branch.
Then came the time for a big change, which our profession makes delightfully doable. I dove head-first into criminal law, joining the Ministry’s Crown Law Office Criminal. For the past 20 years, I have regularly argued ugly, gritty criminal cases in the Ontario Court of Appeal.
While the courtroom’s fray always entices me, so does law’s academic side. For 24 years I have taught a constitutional seminar on Freedom of Expression at University of Toronto’s Law Faculty. As well, I often lecture lawyers, law students and judges in a wide range of venues.
During my month with you, I especially want to draw on another facet of my career. For over three decades, I have enjoyed many volunteer hours engaging in an activity for which law school didn’t prepare me — community organizing and community advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities. I was one of many who successfully fought, 33 years ago, to win protection for persons with disabilities in the Charter of Rights and the Ontario Human Rights Code. From 1994 to 2005, I led the non-partisan community coalition that won the enactment of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, a law requiring Ontario to become fully accessible to persons with disabilities by 2025. For the past four years, I’ve led the community coalition campaigning to get that legislation effectively implemented.
I’ve also learned the joys and burdens of being a party to a law suit. In 2005 and 2007, I personally won two cases at the Human Rights Tribunal. I secured orders requiring TTC to audibly announce all subway and bus stops, so that blind people like me can know when we’ve reached our stop. I’ve learned what it’s like to have a case named after you, and to endure a long day being cross-examined.
It is an incredible honour to take a solid month out of my law practice, to spend with Osgoode’s students and faculty, to teach and learn. To do so in the capacity of a fellowship named in honour of the indefatigable Roy McMurtry, for whom I have such huge respect, makes it even better.
Have you contemplated the possibility of a career in the public service at any level? I’m delighted to tell you what it’s like. Thought about dedicating all or part of your professional time to social justice causes? There’s lots we could discuss. If you are wrestling with an interesting problem in constitutional, criminal or administrative law, disability rights or human rights, and want to toss around ideas, that’s what I’m here for. If you just want to learn more about being a litigator (and especially in appellate forums), swing by.
David Lepofsky, CM, O.Ont, LL.B. (Osgoode), LL.M. (Harvard), LL.D. (Hon.) (Queens, Western) is a Roy McMurtry Clinical Fellow at Osgoode. He invites you to drop by his office if you want to know what lectures he’s lined up to deliver while on campus. Feel free to follow him on Twitter if you’re into that: @davidlepofsky.