Law History Profiles

Deans Faculty Members Alumni Year

Displaying 1 - 20 of 88

“The work we do as lawyers is based on humility — excellence through humility is important,” says Bruce McIvor, founder and partner at First Peoples Law LLP. At First Peoples Law, Bruce is dedicated to defending and advancing the rights of Indigenous people. Bruce, who is Métis, grew up in Manitoba. His family was displaced from their lands, leaving his grandparents to farm in between rocks and swamp. “When I was a young boy on the farm, I picked a lot of rocks, but I decided that there had to be something better to do than picking rocks for the rest of my life,” he recalls.

Photo credit: Chung Chow, courtesy of Business in Vancouver.

Dr. Carol Liao has played a pivotal role in Allard Law since she joined in 2017. In addition to her role as Faculty member and instructor, she is the UBC Sauder Distinguished Scholar of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics, Director of the Centre for Business Law, and Principal Co-investigator of the Canada Climate Law Initiative.

There is little that Professor Emeritus Joost Blom has not done at Allard Law. Professor Blom completed his law degree at the law school in 1970, joined the faculty in 1972, served as Dean from 1997 to 2003, and retired in 2017, but continues to maintain an active presence at Allard Law as well as in the university more broadly.

For only one example of his active current involvement in the UBC community, Professor Blom takes on a new role this upcoming academic year as Principal of the UBC Emeritus College.

Professor Pitman Potter retired in June 2020 after 30 years at the Allard School of Law. He joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1990, before being appointed to associate professor in 1992 and full professor in 1999. During his time with the law school, Professor Potter served in a number of leadership roles, including as Director of Chinese Legal Studies. He held the position of HSBC Chair in Asian Research at the Institute of Asian Research at UBC, where he was also the Director from 1999 to 2008.

The Allard Law History Project sat down with Tamara Levy, QC in the summer of 2020: listen to the full interview. Since then, under her leadership, the UBC Innocence Project continues to work on the exoneration of the wrongfully convicted. On November 12, 2020, they had their first successful exoneration: Tomas Yebes was acquitted after a double-murder conviction in 1983 based on invalid expert evidence.

If you’re a current JD student or alumnus reading this, chances are that Elaine Lenki Borthwick reviewed your law school application. For the last 30 and some years (over 40 years total at UBC), Elaine has served as the law school’s Director, JD Admissions. From a former Prime Minister and numerous justices and judges, Elaine has admitted several generations of British Columbia's legal profession to law school. Her personalized approach to recruitment, and leadership in improving processes, has ensured we continually attract the highest caliber of students to the Allard School of Law.

Professor Tony Sheppard spent more than 50 years with the Allard School of Law before retiring in June of 2020.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts in English and Economics from UBC in 1964, Professor Sheppard went on to an LLB from the school in 1967. Once he completed his articles with Guild, Yule and Company, he was called to the British Columbia bar in 1969 and appointed as an Assistant Professor at UBC that same year. Professor Sheppard became an Associate Professor in 1972 and a full Professor in 1976. He also holds an LLM from the London School of Economics.

Chris Heslinga earned his JD from the Allard School of Law in 2012 but soon found himself back on campus.

After a brief time in private practice, the Campbellford, Ontario native returned to the Law Students’ Legal Advice Program (LSLAP) where he now helps students handle client matters, oversees legal decision-making and teaches students how to think and practice like lawyers.

For technology lawyer Ryan Black, being a member of the Dean’s Advisory Committee for the Centre for Business Law is an important opportunity to give back to the legal community.

Andrew Gay, QC is a partner at Gudmundseth Mickelson LLP where he practices litigation with an emphasis on government liability, regulatory disputes, professional discipline, commercial litigation, and tort litigation. He is also an expert in the area of judicial review of administrative decisions.

For eight years, Mr. Gay was involved with the Allard School of Law as an Adjunct Professor, teaching an upper-year seminar on government liability—an idea that was first suggested by then-government lawyer and now-British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Karen Horsman.

Associate Professor Hoi Kong (inaugural Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C., UBC Professor in Constitutional Law) joined the faculty in 2018.

Erez Aloni joined the faculty at the Allard School of Law in 2017. His primary research interests lie in the legal regulation of adult relationships and complex family structures. Aloni’s work stages the family as an institution affected by a broad range of laws, norms, and economic structures. He is particularly interested in investigating laws which impact the composition and well-being of households and families, as well as the effects—socioeconomic and otherwise— those laws have on society at large.

Tremblay’s research to this point has explored how the family has been regulated in Quebec, where blood ties and formalities are of great cultural importance – creating, perhaps, a narrow understanding of the range of meaningful relationships constituting the family.

Dr. Sara Ghebremusse specializes in mining governance, law and development, and African legal studies and human rights. A rising star in her field, she believes in the law’s transformative potential in the fight against global poverty. Since joining Allard Law in 2018, Dr. Ghebremusse has taught and published in areas including mining governance, law and development, African legal studies, human rights and transnational law.

Camden Hutchison is an associate professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, specializing in corporate law. In particular, Hutchison examines corporate transactions and governance, as well as the historical development of corporate law. With a PhD in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Hutchison continues to the explore the history of corporate law.

Toby Goldbach is an Assistant Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, having joined the faculty in 2017. She comes to the law school following a two-year teaching fellowship at Cornell Law School. She earned her doctorate from Cornell, where she was a Rudolf B. Schlesinger Research Fellow, a Visiting Scholar at the Cegla Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Law at Tel Aviv University Buchmann Faculty of Law, and held grants from the Institute for Comparative Modernities and the Berger Center for Comparative & International Law.

The Allard School of Law is pleased to welcome Professor Debra Parkes to the faculty. Professor Parkes will be joining us on July 1, 2016 as the Chair in Feminist Legal Studies and Director of the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies.

What attracted you to the Chair in Feminist Legal Studies position at the Allard School of Law?

Nicole Barrett is the Director of the Joint International Justice and Human Rights Clinic at Osgoode Hall and University of British Columbia Law Schools.  She was previously a Trial Lawyer and a Legal Officer for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague and a Senior Scholar in Residence at New York University Law School’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, where she directed legal projects with international criminal courts and tribunals.

Assistant Professor Efrat Arbel is a highly-accomplished alumna and one of the newer members of the Allard School of Law faculty.  She earned her doctorate from Harvard Law School in 2012, where she worked under the supervision of Dean Martha Minow.  She holds a BA from McGill University, a JD from UBC, and completed her LLM studies at Harvard Law School before proceeding with her doctorate.  Dr.

The Allard School of Law is pleased to welcome Dr. Asha Kaushal, who recently joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor (tenure-track). Dr. Kaushal is an alumna of the Allard School of Law, where she earned her Ph.D. in 2013. She holds an LL.B. from Osgoode Hall and an LL.M. from Harvard, along with an M.Sc. in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics. She joins the Allard School of Law following a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Law at the University of Toronto. Prior to embarking on her Ph.D., Dr.


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