TORONTO, June 26, 2014 /CNW/ - Janet E. Minor has been elected to lead The Law Society of Upper Canada as its 65th Treasurer. The Treasurer is the top-elected official of the Law Society, which regulates Ontario's lawyers and paralegals in the public interest. Treasurer Minor succeeds former Treasurer Thomas G. Conway.
"I am honoured and humbled to be elected by my fellow benchers to serve as Treasurer of the Law Society," Minor said. "This is a very exciting time to lead the Law Society, as we deal with the challenges and opportunities of globalization, technology and demographic change, while striving to make legal services more accessible and the profession more inclusive. As Treasurer, I look forward to continuing to enhance public confidence in our regulatory processes and working collaboratively with our justice partners to identify and deliver concrete solutions to improve the public's access to legal services."
The Treasurer presides over Convocation, the Law Society's governing board, and is elected by the members of the board, known as benchers.
Treasurer Minor has worked in public law since 1977. Up until her election, she was general counsel in the Constitutional Law Branch of Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General. A highly respected advocate, she has appeared before all levels of Court and has argued many significant cases on behalf of the Ontario government. She was first elected as a bencher of the Law Society in 2001 and was re-elected in 2006 and 2011. She has served on a number of committees including chair of the Professional Development and Competence Committee and the Equity and Aboriginal Issues Committee, as well as a member of the Access to Justice Committee and the Retention of Women and Challenges Faced by Racialized Licensees working groups.
Most recently, Treasurer Minor played an integral role in the introduction of Pathways, an innovative project undertaken to address the shortage of articling placements, involving significant changes to the experiential training component of the Lawyer Licensing Process.
Treasurer Minor is a founding director of the Association of Law Officers of the Crown (ALOC) and past director of The Advocates' Society. She has also served on the boards of the Law Foundation of Ontario and the Ontario Justice Education Network.
She received the Women's Law Association President's Award (2003), the Ontario Bar Association's Tom Marshall Award (2010), the ALOC Carol Creighton Award for Contribution to Public Law (2013), and a Zenith Award celebrating leading women lawyers from Lexpert (2013).
Treasurer Minor has an LLB from the University of Toronto and an LLM from Osgoode Hall Law School. She was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1975.
The Law Society of Upper Canada is the governing body of 46,000 lawyers and 6,100 paralegals in the Province of Ontario, Canada, and the Treasurer is the head of the Law Society. The Law Society has a duty to protect the public interest, to maintain and advance the cause of justice and the rule of law, to facilitate access to justice for the people of Ontario, and to act in a timely, open and efficient manner.
Image with caption: "Janet E. Minor has been elected to lead The Law Society of Upper Canada as its 65th Treasurer - the top-elected official. She succeeds former Treasurer Thomas G. Conway. (CNW Group/The Law Society of Upper Canada)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20140626_C3702_PHOTO_EN_3986.jpg
SOURCE: The Law Society of Upper Canada
Lisa Hall, Communications Manager, The Law Society of Upper Canada, Osgoode Hall, 130 Queen St. W., Toronto ON M5H 2N6, 416-947-7625, [email protected]
Share this article