Canadian Lawyer

from the politicians she works with. There are not many who can work under that kind of scrutiny and be as measured and objective as she is, even with her harshest critics,��� says Craig. ���There���s a particular gentleness that tempers her stern investigations.��� According to Sossin, Leiper���s stint at Legal Aid Ontario would have helped prepare her for the increased public attention she���s dealt with over the last couple of years. ���That���s a setting in which there is an intensity to the conviction of the people involved and the scrutiny of the public,��� he says. Leiper took over as chairwoman of the board of directors at Legal Aid Ontario in 2004. After 17 years in the system as a sole practitioner defending certificate holders, the jump to such a senior role was tough. ���I thought, ���I have to get an MBA in a weekend,��� so I went to the bookstore and got a stack of books: Robert���s Rules of Order, books on the CEO relationship, the Carver model of boards, books on how to be a servant leader,��� says Leiper. ���I read them all, and got these great briefings from legal aid. But I learned best from being on the job.��� Suddenly, political cycles, bureaucracy, and resource management became everyday concerns. ���Criminal and family lawyers who are on the board have to learn, as I did, that they now are responsible for the whole piece. You���re not just there to think about your sector, you bring all the knowledge of that sector that is valuable, and then grow it into this expanded governance role. Now you���re thinking about the interests of many people, including the viability of the corporation.��� In her three years at the helm, she says the LAO board saw signs of the impending budget crisis. After she left in 2007, interest rates plunged with the onset of the global economic downturn, wiping out a large chunk of its income raised through interest on the trust accounts of Ontario lawyers. In 2007, that stream generated more than $50 million for the corporation, but by 2009, it had fallen to less than $5 million. ���Forecasting out, we could see this might happen. We used to say it was like a house; the roof hadn���t fallen off yet, but we were finding shingles in the garden,��� says Leiper. She maintains an active interest in legal aid through her involvement on the board of the Criminal Lawyers��� Association, but says she is sometimes frustrated by the system���s lack of efficiency, and the persistently low financial eligibility rules, which remain virtually unchanged from the rates set in the late 1990s. ���It���s a big challenge and there don���t seem to be any simple answers, but there are lots of people determined to improve it, and I���m one of them. We always have to believe that we can get it right or make it better, because if we give up ��� that���s just not a viable alternative.��� Liva says she���ll be happy to get Leiper back into private practice when her term as integrity commissioner expires next year, since the intensity of the role has limited her ability to take on many clients. ���I haven���t let her out of it. I find at least a case a year I can drag her into,��� says Liva. ���I won���t let her stop because she���s too good at it.��� Although a lower profile for Leiper will also mean a little less excitement in the office, according to Robin Parker, who also practises in association with Leiper and Liva. When a radio DJ christened Leiper a ���watchfox,��� as opposed to a watchdog, after Toronto City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti labelled her ���pretty good-looking,��� the nickname stuck in the office, says Parker. ���We tease her all the time. Even that, she just laughs,��� Parker says. But both Liva and Parker suspect Leiper will find another public service project to take on. ���I don���t think I can keep her at a desk, and I don���t think I���d want to. She flourishes on new challenges,��� says Liva. Whatever it is, Leiper will have to fit it around her other responsibilities as an alternate chairwoman of the Ontario Review Board and as a bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada. ���Janet is a time management guru, and is also careful not to take on more than she can handle,��� says Parker. ���She���s a role model for me in being able to be a wellrounded person, and be a lawyer at the same time. I don���t know anyone who does it better.��� Leiper was part of a new intake elected to the LSUC in 2011, completing a cycle for her, since some of her first legal work as a law student involved defending lawyers in discipline cases in the Convocation room at Osgoode Hall. ���It���s such a familiar institution to me,��� says Leiper. In the articling debate that has dominated her first term as a bencher, Leiper campaigned strongly against those who advocated scrapping articling. The pool of mentoring talent available is too valuable to dispense with, she says. ���How do you deal with clients, how do you make people comfortable talking to you about a problem that maybe they���re not ready to talk to you about in full detail? These are very subtle ideas that can���t be learned just from a book, in my view,��� she says. ���If it���s too passive, you have no emotional stake. You don���t have any sort of fear at play. And fear is such a great teacher, as long as it���s not paralyzing fear. It���s like something great surfers say: It���s not the fear of drowning that gets you. It���s fear of panicking.��� She says law students would do well to consider broadening their scope beyond private practice, and hopes the public interest requirement program at Osgoode Hall Law School, which she helped set up as a visiting professor between 2007 and 2009, will help them think about areas of law they might not have otherwise. All students at the law school must do 40 hours of public interest work in order to graduate. ���I think it���s a different environment now than when I graduated. There are always going to be periods of uncertainty, and I���ve weathered a couple of them professionally myself. But there will always be a need for people who have these skills, and who have the resilience to work in a shifting environment, and who have a strong sense of the values that underpin their work.��� Before deciding what to do once her integrity commissioner role comes to an end, Leiper says she���ll ���recalibrate��� with one of her trips to the ocean. ���When it���s time to move on, I���ll be ready. I���ve really enjoyed this work, and I���ve felt that way about other positions. I���ve learned that it���s just part of what keeps me fresh as a practitioner, is taking on new challenges, and then moving on,��� she says. www.CANADIAN L a w ye r m a g . c o m March 2013 31

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