The Law Society of Upper Canada got a new treasurer this morning. We dropped in to check on what was happening at the monthly meeting of convocation, and were just in time to catch the nomination and acclamation of Derry Millar, who got an enthusiastic-sounding round of applause from the assembled benchers. Millar will take the reins at the next meeting of convocation on June 26. Currently a partner at Weir Foulds specializing in civil litigation, Millar has a CV that runs half a mile long with positions on Law Society committees featuring prominently.
In other news, Convocation heard from Laurie Pawlitza and Bonnie Warkentin, co-chairs of the Retention of Women in Private Practice Working Group. The benchers were voting today on adopting the recommendations of the working group, and eight of the nine recommendations were unanimously approved. Recommendation #4, however — a call to institute a parental leave program that would provide $3,000 per month for three months to help women take some time off — struck a few members as fishy. Seymour Epstein spoke and voted against the motion, saying $3,000 wasn’t going to make a difference for most women, and that the money could be better spent elsewhere. Epstein floated the idea instead of starting a new for-profit company (owned by the law society) that would make loans to members to help them with financial difficulties caused by parental leave or anything else they needed. Alan Silverstein objected to the Law Society getting into such quasi-governmental welfare schemes in the first place. But in the end, the benchers voted to adopt that recommendation as well. [Update: The PDF press release on the decision is now online, you can download it here.]