Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m M a y 2 0 1 4 11 i t was the promise of yet another juicy promotion in Suzanne Polkosnik's very successful corporate career that made her decide it was time to reconsider. "I had a moment of reflection," she recalls, "and wondered how did I get here?" The proposed promotion within EPCOR Utilities Inc., the powerful Edmonton-based electrical transmission and distribution corporation, would have taken her out of law into a pure business role. "I was confronted with the notion of not being a lawyer anymore and I decided I just didn't want it." That is when "the Alberta Legal Aid opportunity came along and I decided it just felt right." So, Polkosnik abandoned the corporate towers to become president and CEO of Alberta's chronically under-funded legal aid system. "Don't get me wrong," she says. "I wouldn't trade my time in private practice or at EPCOR but now I can do something where I can make a difference." At 47, Polkosnik is in the middle of an interesting, successful, and extremely varied career. Born in Saskatchewan she grew up in Edmonton and took a degree in English and political science at McGill University in Montreal. When she graduated, she says she was "torn between the law and journalism." So, she applied to the journalism program at Carleton University in Ottawa and law at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. The Osgoode acceptance came first and that made up her mind. After graduating in law she returned to Edmonton and articled at a criminal firm. After her call to the bar, one of her first jobs, because of her background in criminal law, was with the Legal Aid Youth Office in Edmonton. She then moved on to a variety of increasingly senior positions including a stint at the ever-in-the-public-eye provincial health authority "right around the time relations with POLKOSNIK ABANDONS BOARDROOM TO HEAD ALBERTA LEGAL AID Suzanne Polkosnik now heads Alberta Legal Aid. Continued on page 12 WeSt to his novel argument and the likelihood that future cases may benefit from it. "Even though you lose, if you feel like you've got a good hearing, that's a good judge," he told Law Times. Trudell credits his former articling stu- dent, Ian McCuaig, for putting together the argument for restorative justice in professional misconduct cases. McCuaig says there's a greater body of literature looking at the approach in the United States and Australia. Small-firm lawyers and sole practitioners are overrepresented in the discipline process, something he says points more to the lack of support than character issues among those who work on their own. "The discipline process is really troublesome for small practitioners because it doesn't really recognize the kind of pressures that they face and the kind of factors that motivate the kind of deci- sions they make that are not the best deci- sions." But Leiper also cited research that suggested serious fraud matters would be exempt from a restorative justice approach. "The consequences to the reputation of the profession would not align with such a regulatory response." — YAMRI tADDEsE yamri.taddese@thomsonreuters.com eelCottrelle_CL_May_14.indd 1 14-04-14 9:31 AM

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