How this lawyer expanded his mediation practice

By the mid-2010s, about 15 years into his legal career, Kumail Karimjee had built a healthy practice in employment law, human rights and mediation. He had cultivated a loyal roster of institutional clients, most of which were non-profits and charities. Despite that success, he wanted to keep his legal skills sharp. In particular, he felt he would benefit from some formal training in mediation. By that point, he’d developed his knowledge of the practice area through experience and the occasional workshop. “I wanted an opportunity,” he says, “to read, think and write about issues that I was seeing as a practitioner.”

So Karimjee enrolled in the dispute resolution specialization of the Osgoode Professional LLM, a rigorous graduate program that he could complete on a part-time basis. In short order, the program had an impact on his day-to-day practice. “The exposure to different theoretical debates and approaches allowed me to experiment with different ways of doing things,” he says, adding that he was able to “develop an approach that fit me.”

He also enjoyed studying alongside his classmates. Most were lawyers, but some worked in non-legal fields — such as medicine and politics — that often deal with conflict. This created a “richness” of thought that complemented his coursework.

Today, Karimjee is confident that the master’s program made him a more thoughtful lawyer. “Pre-LLM, I would have been narrower in my focus to my work,” he says. “I now have a set of resources and tools that I can employ that are very helpful in working through projects.”