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www.canadianlawyermag.com 25 the business, they boost it. The partnership put me in this role knowing exactly where I stood on these issues, so the debates we had were principled ones, and the results, asso- ciate retention and engagement, have spoken for themselves. Q: If another managing partner wanted to replicate what you've done at Lerners, what's the one structural change you'd tell them to make first? A: Flip the decision-making tree. If deci- sions are being made purely top-down, you need to get the real evidence of what your people are experiencing first. I did a lot of listening sessions early on, and if you ask people for feedback, you have to be prepared to act on it. If you listen and don't act, you break the trust that got them to confide in you in the first place. CHANGEMAKERS Brendon Pooran INVESTING IN THE DECISION NO ONE ELSE WOULD FUND Founder and managing partner, PooranLaw, Toronto, ON Brendon Pooran, founder and managing partner at PooranLaw in Toronto, is named one of Canadian Lawyer's Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers in Canada for 2026 in the Changemakers category. He founded the firm as a multidisciplinary practice serving individuals, families, and not-for-profit organizations in the disability and human services sectors across Canada. Canadian Lawyer named PooranLaw one of the country's top 10 pro bono firms, a distinction tied directly to the I Decide Law Program. The program was founded by now- partner Stephanie Dickson at a legal aid clinic in Windsor to promote decision-making rights and individualized planning for people with intellectual disabilities living below the poverty line. When it lost its funding, PooranLaw adopted the program, designed and funded a second iteration, and brought Dickson on board to lead it. It remains the only program of its kind in Canada, funded entirely by PooranLaw and sustained through a social enterprise model built to remain financially resilient while prioritizing community benefit. Betting on it himself Pooran didn't wait for outside funding to offer the program. Rather than pursue outside grants or partners, he decided the firm would fund the I Decide Law Program itself, betting that acting immediately mattered more than waiting years for outside money while people remained excluded from decisions about their own lives. Funding it independently gave the firm room to build around the people it serves, not a funder's priorities, and to adjust course as it learned. For Pooran, that wasn't a business calculation. It was a values one. Redefining what capacity means Pooran's influence reaches into national policy through his work developing a Canadian standard on legal capacity, a framework meant to support legal and supported decision-making over substitute decision-making. He argues the shift that matters most is definitional, moving law away from treating capacity as a diagnosis and toward recog- nizing the support people need to make and communicate their own decisions. He serves as course director at York University, teaching critical disability law to future lawyers, advocates, and policy makers, and has been appointed to the board of Accessibility Standards Canada. Policy work that reaches into daily life Pooran has advocated alongside financial institutions for more accessible banking poli- cies for people with intellectual disabilities, and pushed for the elimination of barriers to accessing the Registered Disability Savings Plan and the Canada Disability Benefit. He points to the binary thinking baked into most systems – either a person decides inde- pendently or someone else decides for them – as the real obstacle. He advocates for laws and policies which recognize some people rely on supports and accommodations when dealing with other parties, such as financial and government. Recognition and reach Pooran received the 2025 Empowered Kids Ontario Tribute Award for Service and will be honoured at Corbrook's Awakening Abilities "Having people around you who think very differently from you, that's something on which your ideas become much more crisp and clear and sharp, because there are people who push you, and I'm lucky to have them" Yola Ventresca, Lerners LLP