Meet the team that is anticipating your needs and ensuring your voice is heard in policy and professional development.

When I laid out my practice innovation mandate last fall I knew that evolution was imperative for lawyers to remain relevant and trusted advisors in a rapidly changing business climate. I also knew that the OBA and our members could play a pivotal role in advancing modernization. What I didn’t know, of course, was just a few months later how accelerated the pace of change would become, how urgent the need to adapt, or how critical a role our Association would play.

The Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Community (SOGIC) is celebrating 25 years at the forefront of LGBTTIQ2S advocacy in Canada. Founded during World AIDS Day, 1994, SOGIC now has chapters and representatives in every Canadian Province. In the first in a series of articles featuring retrospectives of the group’s founding and work, former SOGIC Ontario Branch (OBA) chairs, Chris Ellis and Paul Saguil reflect on their involvement.

The old Irish witticism, “youth is wasted on the young,” clearly arises from the perceived wisdom of tired elders and perhaps their jealousy of opportunities available only to the young. If you are looking for good reason to be jealous of or, better still, be inspired by the new generation of up-and-comers, you just have to attend any OBA Student or Young Lawyers Division event.

The Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Section of the OBA (SOGIC) celebrates 25 years at the forefront of LGBTTIQ2S advocacy in Canada.

Lawyers, natural problem-solvers and strategic thinkers, are best equipped to devise innovative ways to deliver legal advice, documentation and action that address our clients' needs effectively and efficiently. And, I would argue, we bear a responsibility to do so.

In this address – delivered in Kingston at the OBA’s September Council Meeting – President Colin Stevenson explains the impetus behind his practice innovation mandate and outlines how the OBA will help all members keep pace with the rate of change.

With its new Momentum Campaign, the OBA is drawing attention to the topic of gender roles and inequality by engaging the profession and encouraging everyone to consider changing their behaviour or assumptions.

Over the past year, you have embraced and shared my interest in helping to advance gender equality and have helped build terrific momentum, for which I will forever be grateful.

Poised to assume the OBA presidency on September 1, Colin Stevenson sits down to talk legal innovation, triathlons and the inspiration he has drawn from an eccentric TV barrister and an extraordinary Supreme Court of Canada justice.