Canadian Lawyer

14 www.canadianlawyermag.com FEATURES CROSS EXAMINED FOR SOMEONE so youthful and exuberant, Tory Hibbitt has thought a lot about death. After getting her LLM in medical law and ethics, Hibbitt was one of the few lawyers on a phone call about one of the most contro- versial and complex legal topics in the news: the Justice Department's consultation on as- sisted dying. The debate has thrust Hibbitt — who has spent her adult life studying bioethics and the law — into the national conversation. "That day going home, I really felt like I was part of something big and important," she says. "To be able to give opinions and actually have the ear of the government on things that are that significant feels really good." As Hibbitt's work on assisted dying, pri- marily through the Canadian Bar Association, has come to the fore, she's also finding her stride in her day job at a law firm. As an associate at Carbert Waite LLP in Calgary, she has branched out into more and more areas of commercial law as her prac- tice grows. Before becoming lawyer, philosophy was Hibbitt's first academic love — perhaps not surprising, given that philosophy has been dubbed a preparation for death (or at least that's what Socrates, after standing trial, told his student, Plato.) Hibbitt followed her early inclinations — a love of crafting a convincing argument — through a philoso- phy degree to law school, where she received awards and scholarships. Hibbitt's time in school, where she volun- the sense of discomfort of being in a profes- sion where you just don't know what you're doing," she says. "I think with lawyers, and especially junior lawyers, as you come out of law school, you're used to getting good grades. . . . Then you end up actually practising and you're way out of your depth. And it's a terrible feeling." For someone focused on the path to suc- cess, professional life has fewer tangible signs, like an A+ on a final paper, to navigate toward. WHEN STUDENT BECOMES TEACHER Young lawyer Tory Hibbitt speaks to Anita Balakrishnan about finding her place in the profession — in a big way teered as an academic mentor and law clinic co-ordinator, has also prepared her for her current extracurriculars, which include tak- ing law students under her wing. Hibbitt recalls how hard she pushed her- self to achieve her goals, strategizing how she could do it all and be the best — whether that meant running for class president, studying in Tokyo, graduating in the top percentile in law school and grad school or taking 14 trips to 12 countries while doing all of the above. "To be able to give opinions and actually have the ear of the government on things that are that significant feels really good." "I put a lot of pressure on myself to be one of the top students. It ended up getting me awards and a scholarship that I then used to- ward my masters," she says. "But the method is, really, the vice that is perfectionism. And my advice to students now is to take a breath. . . . If I were talking to my 23-year-old self, I would say, 'Take a breath and just try and enjoy things.'" Hibbitt says she quickly recognized that a lifetime of schooling taught her a lot about reading textbooks and writing papers and less about managing a business. "Hearing it now from people who are even just a year or two junior to me, it's so familiar: "What you do is you get comfortable with that discomfort, and you get comfortable with your capabilities," she says. Although Hibbitt, compared to many young people, is far from rudderless. A month-long trial as an articling student sparked her career in insurance defence. De- termined to return to medical law, she got her current role with one of Calgary's top health lawyers through her deep involvement in the Canadian Bar Association, ordering a special- ized bioethics law book from a law librarian and joining a board. But, she says, the practice of law has taught her there's often no one "right an-

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