Canadian Lawyer 4Students

6 F A L L 2 0 1 5 C A N A D I A N L a w y e r 4 S T U D E N T S I n August 2010, Toronto was simmering away in a sticky heat wave as John MacLean found himself packing to move to Nunavut, where the weather was fall- like and dictated that jeans and a fl eece were more appropriate than shorts and a T-shirt. He remembers arriving in Iqaluit in what he calls "dust season" — mercifully, most of the mosquitoes were gone. Originally from Nova Scotia, MacLean found his way to Nunavut during a tough time for new lawyers. He had graduated from the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Law and summered with the New Brunswick Department of Health, where he worked on personal health information legislation. What was supposed to be a two-month stint had luckily turned into a 10-month contract. Following that, he articled at the Offi ce of the Information and Privacy Commissioner in Toronto until September 2009. But job prospects were slim and he was facing unemployment. "I was called to the bar during the recession. e hire-back rate in Toronto was 42 per cent and governments weren't hiring. It was a really sticky situation for people in my cohort," says MacLean, who is today legal counsel with the Legal & Constitutional Law Division of the Nunavut Department of Justice. MacLean answered an ad in the On- tario Reports for a job with the Nunavut Department of Justice. " ey listed all the areas that I thought I would be interested in learning about, so I sent off an applica- tion and months later received a call for an interview and was later given an off er to move up." Technically, he was in his second year post-call when he started but says he felt more like a fi rst year. "It was an adventure," he recalls. " is is a great job; it's a chal- lenging job. I have complex and interest- ing things to work on along with mundane everyday questions like 'does this contract comply with s. 46 of the Financial Admin- istration Act?'" e law group he works in serves all nine departments of the government of Nunavut and is the principal source of legal advice. ere are nine lawyers plus a director when fully staff ed. "We are a full-service legal department. We are quite small and many of us are, for the most part, within our fi rst 10 years of practice. We're young and the North is the best boot camp a young lawyer can get because you get to run your own fi les." He recalls getting a phone call at 7:30 p.m. on a Sunday night telling him there was a hearing for preferential procurement for the Nunavummi Nangminiqaqtunik Ikajuuti appeal board and they needed a lawyer. "We won, but that was a baptism by fi re. But it meant all subsequent NNI appeals came to me and the next big one was a medevac contract. I found myself briefi ng cabinet. I remember walking out of the meeting thinking, 'look what can happen in a year.'" MacLean says moving to Nunavut ex- panded his skill set and his horizons — the territory is huge, covering three time zones. Learning on the job has been a big part of his almost fi ve years at Justice. "While I had a lot of administrative law experience, and access to information and protection of privacy down cold, I had not done a lot of corporate commercial work," he says. He had never reviewed or dra ed a contract and hadn't done anything related to procurement. Now, procurement is his principal area of focus. A lawyer who did Northern BOOT CAMP It may seem daunting to some, but John MacLean says moving to Nunavut kick-started his career and has provided opportunities to not only practise a broad range of law but help create policy and legislation for the relatively new territory.

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