This Is What A Lawyer Looks Like: Rosel Kim, Staff Lawyer at the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF).

[Note: This piece was originally published at https://www.whatalawyerlookslike.com/]

Tell us about yourself.

I am a Staff Lawyer at the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), a national non-profit organization that works to advance the substantive equality rights of women and girls through litigation, law reform and public education. Since 1985, LEAF has intervened in more than 100 appellate cases, including more than 50 interventions before the Supreme Court of Canada in areas such as sexual assault law, workplace discrimination and benefits, pay equity, and reproductive rights.

LEAF develops its positions for each case through a consultative process that engages the expertise of legal practitioners, feminist legal academics, and community organizers. So a big part of my job is to identify and form committees for each court intervention, chair and coordinate committee meetings, and work with counsel to shape our arguments. I also draft LEAF’s law reform submissions to government, and represent LEAF at Parliamentary consultations, media interviews and panels.

You recently left Bay Street to move to the non-profit space. What went into that decision and how has that influenced your practice?

I talked a bit about my thought process in this opinion piece published in Precedent Magazine.

It was certainly not a straightforward decision, and one that I questioned a lot. As I mentioned, there are a lot of undeniable benefits to working on Bay Street, including access to a network of influence.