Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/642579
"I fell into law for fairly altruistic reasons," says Mary Wahbi, a managing partner with Basman Smith LLP specializing in high net worth estate planning and corporate commercial law. "I wanted to help people. Then I got into private practice." What she found there, she says, was challenging but not deeply fulfilling. She needed more. So Wahbi brought her expertise in wills to what was then known as the 519 Clinic, a service run by Osgoode Hall Law School for HIV positive people of low income. This was in the late 1980's, in the midst of the AIDS crisis. "Often these clients were disowned by their families because of their sexual orientation," she remembers. "Intestacy law would have seen what little they owned go to those family members, instead of to their actual life partner." More than two decades later, Wahbi is still finding fulfillment in similar circumstances. She volunteers for The Wills Project, now run by Pro Bono Students Canada. She trains and supervises law students who help qualified low income clients get their affairs in order. And she meets and talks with the clients herself. "I like both aspects of it," Wahbi says. "Helping clients who really need it and can't afford a lawyer and working with and training the law students. The project encourages young lawyers to go into what I think is a really important area of the law." Wahbi also works with Wellspring, doing wills for low-income terminally ill cancer patients on an as-needed basis. "As private practice lawyers, we can often get caught up in the business of law and lose sight of what we're meant to be doing," she says. "This keeps me a bit more grounded. True, these clients may not have a lot of money. But they all have the desire to organize their affairs and make their final wishes known to their loved ones. They need access to legal services to help them do that." Mary Wahbi 22 FLIP YOUR WIG