In this edition of the OBA Health Law’s Section Insider, we spoke with the 2024 recipient of the Susan Davidson Memorial Award for Excellence in Health Law, Justice Ira Parghi. Here’s what she had to say.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself: where did you grow-up, what law school did you go to, and how
long have you been practicing?
I grew up in Kamloops, BC and went to the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. I was called to the bar in 2001 and articled at Torys, worked as a junior lawyer at what is now Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb, and moved to the health law group at Borden Ladner Gervais in my third year. I kind of stumbled into it: I did not know a lot about health law as an area of practice, but was intrigued by the opportunity to have a high volume litigation practice, run my own files, and really get my hands dirty as a litigator.
I was at BLG for many years, before moving to the US in 2011. In the US, I first worked as a Corporate Privacy Officer at a large health system in New York. That was an in-house role, and a compliance role, so it was in some ways different from what I had done before. But it really gave me a chance to get to know the business environment. It also enabled me to really help the client operationalize the advice we gave – something you don’t always get to be involved in as outside counsel. After that, I practiced in the health care and data privacy groups in the San Francisco office of Ropes & Gray, a global US firm. And then I came back to Canada in 2018. It has been quite a whirlwind.
I was recently appointed to be a judge on the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto. It’s a huge honour. At the time I received my appointment, I was practicing on my own – I had just hung up my own shingle in January of this year.
Your nominators talked about your commitment to mentoring. Can you talk a bit about that?
I had the privilege of being mentored by some amazing human beings and lawyers all the way along in my career. I just try to return the favour. I think sometimes we worry that mentoring can be a huge commitment of time and effort that is difficult to muster when we are all so stretched thin. But what I have learned is that mentoring can take different forms. Sometimes it means having a long, meaty conversation with someone about what they want to do and how they might get there, and what their worries are, and how to help clear the path with them. But sometimes it just means forwarding a job posting to someone and offering to speak to them if they want to bounce it around. Sometimes it simply involves connecting them to someone else who might be able to do those things for them better than I can. I think of it as a big cosmic cycle: it’s something I benefitted from tremendously at many stages of my career, and I try to pass it on to others.
But there has a lot in it for me too. I eventually realized that mentoring is a very fun way to meet junior colleagues and learn more about what is happening in the profession from their vantage point. The best part is that many people who started out as junior colleagues whom I mentored, either formally or informally, have now become peers and even friends. And I learn from them all the time.
Any article or other information or content expressed or made available in this Section is that of the respective author(s) and not of the OBA.