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ASSOCIATES at the age of six that she wanted to prac- tise law, and she wasn't moved by Atticus Finch or any other fictional lawyer to right the wrongs of society. After doing an undergrad degree in It's a family affair L ori O'Neill jokes that she didn't get into law in some glamorous or ro- manticized way — she didn't know English literature at McGill University, O'Neill worked some administrative- type jobs and even tried her hand at web design. Now an associate at Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP's Ottawa office, she quickly realized that was not her area "at all." "At that time, this is the honest answer, my younger brother was in law school and we were talking about it one time when I was visiting with him, and I just realized this is something that I've been thinking about doing when I was in high school but it had kind of fallen off the radar," she says. "Seeing what Mike was doing, I thought, 'You know what? I'm going to do that too.'" Having a family member who is also a lawyer is helpful, says O'Neill, a litiga- tor in the areas of employment and la- bour law and insurance defence. And it's easy to call on her brother, Michael, for advice, as he also practises at Gowlings. So does her other younger brother. Her father is at Gowlings, too. "I work with my whole family," O'Neill laughs. "It's great for me because none of us work in the same department, so we're all working in separate areas of the firm and really there isn't that much overlap 18 A UGUST 2008 www. Law ye rmag.com Lori O'Neill is just one of a whack of O'Neills at Gowlings in Ottawa. BY KIRSTEN MCMAHON