There’s no such thing as a typical day for Luisa Ritacca, a partner at the litigation firm Stockwoods LLP. She might be defending a lawyer in a negligence lawsuit one day and representing an investor suing a stockbroker the next. And chances are that whatever the case is that morning, she’ll be on to something else by the afternoon.
Such is life at Stockwoods. It’s a small firm of only fifteen lawyers, but a busy one. At any one time, they might have upwards of seven hundred cases on the go. Not that the pace bothers Ritacca. In fact, it’s the reason why she got into litigation.
“I like the idea of getting into court as often as possible,” she says. “And the chance to litigate lots of very different subject matters on any given day is something that appeals to me.”
So it must have required a major adjustment when she had to focus on just one case for the better part of a year. Ritacca, along with fellow Stockwoods lawyer Brian Gover, served as counsel for the Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario in the lead-up to and during the inquiry that examined the flawed pediatric autopsies performed by the now discredited pathologist Charles Smith.
The two were retained in April 2007 and made their final submissions in April 2008, working full-time almost from the very beginning.
The inquiry, which dealt with the wrongful accusation or conviction of several parents and caregivers for the deaths of their infant children, was extremely emotional. Smith and the system that enabled him were the focus of massive public outrage, and the press covered the resulting inquiry in careful detail.
“The subject matter of the inquiry was very intense and the emotions of the parties involved were very raw — rightfully so,” says Ritacca. “And we were certainly aware of the fact that the decisions we were making could appear in the next day’s newspaper.”
To help her do her job, Ritacca remembered something her former mentor, David Stockwood, the founder of Stockwoods LLP who passed away earlier this year, had told her. “He said: ‘Treat your clients and opposing council the way you’d like them to treat you,’ ” recalls Ritacca.
“Keeping cordial and respectful relations with all of the counsel involved made it much easier to go through the very intense subject matter,” says Ritacca.
“Our respective clients may not have seen eye-to-eye on everything, but it made it much easier to do the job we were meant to do…when you’re in a room full of lawyers who treat each other respectfully.”
It was one of the many lessons she had learned from Stockwood, whose portrait dominates the main boardroom at his old law firm.
“He understood the stresses of what it’s like to be a young lawyer. He was able to bring a real sense of calm to your early years of practise,” says Ritacca of her old boss. “He also was very interested in our non-legal lives. One thing that we certainly strive for [at Stockwoods] is to have as good of a work/life balance as possible, and that is, in large part, due to David’s influence on the firm.”
It’s advice that isn’t always easy to follow. In addition to her busy litigation practice, Luisa and her husband have twin three-year-olds at home.
“I have learned in the past three years that you don’t always have the perfect work/life balance,” she laughs. “You continuously have to strive to make it as even as possible but accept that it will never be. You live with the imperfections.”
The Lowdown
Name: Luisa Ritacca
Firm: Stockwoods LLP
Year of call : 2001
First job: At a T-shirt concession stand at the SkyDome
Proudest moment: The birth of my twin daughters
Worst subject at law school: Restitutions
Greatest frustration: Never having enough time
Favourite law movie: A Time to Kill
Personal style: Classic with a sense of whimsy
Photography by Vanessa Heins; Makeup by Victoria Fedosoff