CLASP is celebrating their success in establishing a ground-breaking precedent in residential tenancies law which is featured in the 2024 edition of the Ontario Landlord & Tenant Law Practice textbook.

CLASP students worked with the administrative law division’s review counsel to bring an appeal of a Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) case to the Ontario Divisional Court. Beginning in the summer of 2022, students helped set the precedent that the LTB can reinstate a tenant to their unit after being unlawfully evicted.

This precedent pushes back against the harmful practice of landlords unlawfully evicting tenants and immediately re-renting the unit at a much higher rate. To see the entire decision, please see Schram v. Thompson, 2022 ONSC 6922.

Osgoode had the privilege of hosting two distinguished alumni from the Court of Appeal for Ontario. Chief Justice Michael Tulloch ‘89 and former dean Justice Lorne Sossin ’92 actively engaged with students at two separate events at the Law School.

Chief Justice Michael Tulloch addressed students on the complexities of court administration. His insightful remarks provided a unique perspective on the challenges and responsibilities that come with overseeing the judicial system. His wealth of experience and his commitment to justice were inspiring the next generation of legal minds.

Justice Sossin judged the final round of the 3rd annual Con Law Moot, which was hosted by Osgoode Constitutional Law Society and Henein Hutchinson Robitaille LLP. The moot helps students develop their advocacy skills while at the same time meet like-minded peers and legal professionals.

The opportunity to connect with such accomplished alumni is inspiring to students and gives them a unique opportunity to interact with and learn from leaders in the judiciary. It also reminds them that they are part of a larger Osgoode community that extends far beyond the classroom.

The 27th Annual Business & Law Conference kicked off with a warm welcome to attendees, as the JD/MBA Students’ Association from Osgoode Hall Law School and Schulich School of Business brought together a diverse audience of students, alumni, academics, and industry professionals. The conference serves as a platform for exploring pressing issues at the crossroads of law, business, and public policy.

This year’s theme, “Corporate Scandal: Crisis Intervention and Organizational Resilience,” delves into the aftermath of corporate scandals that have made global headlines in recent years. From unethical tax consulting in Australia to high-profile price-fixing battles in Canada, the conference aims to dissect the complexities surrounding these scandals and shed light on strategies for crisis intervention and organizational recovery.

The event focuses on key themes, including the creation and maintenance of crisis-resilient organizations, rebuilding post-scandal, and effective management and lawyering amid corporate crises. The expert panelists and Keynote Speaker, Lawrence Ritchie ’86, are expected to provide valuable insights into these critical areas.

Dean Trevor Farrow, addressing the attendees, expressed pride in the high-caliber students who make up York University’s premier JD/MBA program. Recognizing the unique position of these students with a dual education in law and business, Dean Farrow emphasized the importance of understanding the intricate challenges posed by corporate scandals. He highlighted the role of legal and business professionals in upholding justice, transparency, and accountability.

Encouraging active participation in discussions, Dean Farrow urged attendees to absorb the knowledge shared by distinguished speakers and collaborate with peers to deepen their understanding of corporate law and governance. He emphasized that the legal profession goes beyond interpreting statutes, calling on attendees to safeguard the principles that underpin society.

In closing, Dean Farrow expressed confidence that the conference would equip students with a heightened awareness of the challenges and complexities in the corporate and legal spheres. He encouraged them to seize the opportunity to expand their horizons, challenge their perspectives, and emerge as advocates for justice and ethical conduc

An Osgoode assistant professor has just been appointed to a working group that will be transforming civil justice in Ontario. Suzanne Chiodo is the only academic member of the Civil Rules Review Working Group, an initiative announced earlier this week by Attorney General Doug Downey and Chief Justice Morawetz of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

The Working Group will be reviewing the Rules of Civil Procedure, which govern civil non-family proceedings before the Ontario Superior Court. It will identify issues and develop proposals for reforming the Rules to make civil court processes more efficient, affordable, and accessible. Other members of the Working Group include judges and members of the private and public bar. The aim of the initiative is to increase access to justice; reduce cost, delay, and complexity; maximize the use of court resources; and leverage technical solutions.

“I am very proud to be the academic member of this committee”, said Professor Chiodo. “It’s exciting to be a part of improving access to civil justice in Ontario.”

The Working Group will begin consultations with civil justice system stakeholders in early 2024.

Please visit the conference webpage for a detailed program and registration.

It could be the biggest thing to hit the legal profession since the constitution.

Leading legal thinkers from Osgoode and beyond will gather to assess the seismic impact of artificial intelligence on the law during a special conference March 13 sponsored by the Osgoode-based Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security.

The event, titled Artificial Intelligence and the Law: New Challenges and Possibilities for Fundamental Human Rights and Security, will take place at the Helliwell Centre at Osgoode from noon until 6:15 p.m. on March 13. Stay tuned for details on registration and the full agenda.

“I am delighted that this incredibly important discussion is being hosted at Osgoode Hall Law School,” said Dean Trevor Farrow.

“Academics, lawyers, policymakers and the public are already heavily influenced by and reliant upon AI,” he added. “Osgoode very much sees itself at the centre of these discussions and innovations.”

By bringing together researchers with AI expertise across various fields of practice, conference speakers and attendees will also be able to engage with larger questions about law’s role in the regulation of emerging technologies, legal neutrality, ethics, and professional responsibility, said Associate Dean (Research and Institutional Relations) Carys Craig, who will speak on AI and copyright.

“I’m very excited about this conference,” she said. “Osgoode is known for its thought leadership and critical, interdisciplinary thinking, which is exactly what is needed as Canada grapples with the rapid acceleration of AI across almost every facet of society.”

The featured speakers will also include Professor Barnali Choudhury, director of the Nathanson Centre.

“Although AI offers numerous opportunities to society, it also poses risks, particularly in relation to human rights and security,” she noted. “Lawyers should be well versed in these risks to ensure that AI use aligns with legal standards.”

The conference’s comprehensive examination of artificial intelligence will include the growing use of generative AI, which powers tools like ChatGPT, said Professor Valerio De Stefano, a co-organizer of the event and a panellist who will address today’s challenging issues around artificial intelligence and work.

“The law will have to react to a lot of the challenges that arise from artificial intelligence in order for society to thrive on the opportunities that AI offers,” he noted.

De Stefano said that almost no area of the law will be left untouched, including criminal law, copyright law, labour law and tax law. Conference speakers will also dig into the implications of AI for legal ethics, legal practice and legal education.

“It’s extremely important that lawyers, both academics and practitioners, start discussing how to react to all these new things that are coming out of the AI landscape – and this is the opportunity to do that,” he added. “There’s a lot of people at Osgoode that do top-notch, groundbreaking research on law and technology.”

Other speakers will include Professor Jonathon Penney, who will examine whether AI safety standards are really safe, and Professor Allan Hutchinson, who will discuss “AI and law’s multiplicity.” Rounding out the list of Osgoode experts are Professor Sean Rehaag, PhD student Alexandra Scott and Osgoode PhD alumnus Jake Okechukwu Effoduh, now a law professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.

In the afternoon, De Stefano will chair a roundtable discussion on artificial intelligence, due process and legal ethics. Panellists will include Osgoode Dean Farrow, Professor Patricia McMahon, Professor Richard Haigh, Glenn Stuart, the executive director of professional regulation for the Law Society of Ontario, and Professor Amy Salyzyn of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law.

With only 11 hours to spare, student lawyers with Osgoode’s Community & Legal Aid Services Program (CLASP) have saved the parents of a York University student from family breakup and deportation to Colombia, where they faced potential danger or even death.

When 2L student Brandon Jeffrey Jang and 3L student Emma Sandri learned on Dec. 18 that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) had ordered the parents to board a Colombia-bound plane in Toronto on Jan. 18, they worked full out over the Christmas break to prepare about 1,000 pages of legal submissions to stop the deportation. Their request was initially denied by the CBSA, so they filed two supporting applications with the Federal Court, under the supervision of CLASP review counsel Subodh Bharati.

On Jan. 17^th, they appeared in person before a Federal Court judge in Toronto to make their case for the family, which has lived in Canada since 2009. The couple’s adult son is a student in York’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science and their daughter is set to graduate from Queen’s University and plans to study medicine. The son and daughter, who already have permanent residency status in Canada, faced being separated from their parents if the deportation had gone ahead as scheduled. The family breakup also threatened their academic careers.

The family expressed their gratitude in an emotional email.

“Thank you very much for all the effort that you put in our case,” the mother wrote. “I don’t have enough words to express what I feel right now and to say thank you. You are the best lawyers that Toronto has. Gracias, amigos! God bless you!”

Their joy was shared by the CLASP team.

“We were just so happy,” said Jang about hearing news of the successful stay application. “We’ve built a close connection with the family and we’ve all worked extremely hard on this case.

“That’s the amazing part about CLASP,” he added, “is that we’re able to take on these very unique, complicated cases that have a tremendous impact on people’s lives.”

Jang said the experience has confirmed his desire to pursue a career in immigration law – and this summer he will work for Toronto immigration law firm Green and Spiegel LLP.

Sandri said that preparing hundreds of pages of court applications in a month was a tremendous challenge, but learning that the family can stay in Canada as a result of their efforts was a huge relief and incredibly rewarding.

“It was difficult in terms of wanting to put out our best work in such a limited time span,” she explained, “and we really felt the pressure of the fact these people’s lives were possibly at stake.”

As they waited for the court decision, she added, “we both couldn’t sleep because we were thinking about what’s going to happen to this family and we were really stressing about that.”

Bharati said the condensed time frame and the last-minute court reprieve made the case more intense than many others that CLASP students have worked on. “This one was even more last minute,” he explained, “because it was hours before their deportation flight.”

In the wake of the court decision, Bharati said, the parents can now obtain work permits while they wait for the Federal Court to hear judicial reviews of previous decisions that rejected their applications for permanent residency status on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

The father became a target of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the early 1990s when he became a candidate for the country’s Liberal Party, actively working to prevent youth from joining the paramilitary organization. After numerous threats and the suspected murder of his nephew by FARC members, the family fled to the United States. When they returned to Colombia seven years later, thinking it was safe, the mother was brutally raped and they fled again, eventually making their way to Canada. With the Colombian peace process currently faltering and FARC still a viable force, the family believes their safety could still be threatened if they return to the country.

In Canada, the parents have become actively involved in their Toronto community, volunteering during the pandemic, for example, to deliver food to house-bound, immune-compromised residents.

With the students’ time at CLASP nearing an end, Jang and Sandri expressed special appreciation for Bharati’s guidance and trust.

“All of our experiences at the clinic leading up to this case prepared us for the uphill battle we confronted when fighting for this family,” said Jang. “The result was a total team effort on everybody’s part and it was all worth it.”

For the third consecutive year, Osgoode Hall Law School has attracted more applications for its JD program than any other law school in Ontario.

According to recently released statistics from the Ontario Law School Application Service, a division of the Ontario University Application Centre in Guelph, Ont., Osgoode received 2,867 applications in 2023 for its 2024-2025 first-year class of approximately 300 students.

“I think one powerful thing that our admissions numbers show, it is that we are highly desired, highly sought after,” said Manager, Admissions & Student Financial Services Marcos Ramos Jr.

“But also,” he added, “when you look at our numbers closely, we have one of the most, if not the most diverse class of students within Canada.”

That impressive diversity, he said, is a reflection of the law school’s longstanding holistic admissions policy and a determined effort by its recruiters to create Canada’s most diverse law school. Law students educated in that environment simply become better lawyers, said Ramos Jr.

“Academics are essential,” he noted, “but what makes an excellent lawyer is your social skills, right? And we’re bringing to students an understanding of different walks of life – be it class, race, creed, so on and so forth.”

In recruiting students for Osgoode, he noted, the law school’s recruiters look beyond strong academic skills to each applicant’s life story and passions.

“Show me the passion!” explained Ramos Jr. “Show me how you want to contribute.”

Members of the fledgling Osgoode Sikh Students’ Association (OSSA) are playing a key role in bringing Sikh law students together at law schools across Canada.

The organization, which was launched in the summer of 2022, was the first of its kind in the country and will play an important role in improving members’ law school experience, said co-president Dalraj Singh Gill, a 2025 candidate in the JD/MBA program.

“The feeling of community in law school can make or break a student’s experience,” he said, “and allowing a Sikh student to interact and work with other Sikh students allows them to share experiences and memories that resonate amongst the group.”

3L student and co-president Tripat Kaur Sandhu and Karen Kaur Randhawa ’23 took the lead in establishing OSSA in 2022. Sandhu, Randhawa and Gill hope the initiative will enrich not only Sikh students at the law school, but the wider Osgoode community, the legal profession at large, and Sikh law students across Canada.

Gill said the organization is helping Sikh law students to remain rooted in the central principles of the Sikh faith, including the pursuit of justice and standing against oppression – ideals that are also relevant to the practice of law.

In addition, members hope the organization, through its various events and activities, will help improve understanding of the Sikh community at Osgoode and will provide a platform to advocate for Sikh issues and other racialized and minority communities at Osgoode.

“Our goal, among others,” said Gill, “is to tackle systemic barriers that prevent Sikh students and persons of colour from accessing the legal profession.”

From their beginnings with OSSA, Sandhu, Randhawa and Gill have actively reached out to Sikh law students across Canada, supporting them in their efforts to launch chapters at their own universities. Sikh law students’ associations followed at the University of Ottawa in January of 2023, Toronto Metropolitan University in February of 2023, the University of Windsor in May of 2023, Thompson Rivers University in the summer of 2023, and Queens University in the fall of 2023. For 2024, an SSA chapter is being eyed at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.

“We are also hoping to get in touch with B.C. law schools,” said Gill, “and then later expand across to law schools in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and at Dalhousie in Nova Scotia.”

The chapters are not officially affiliated with the Canadian Association of Sikh Lawyers. But Gill said Sikh law students’ groups already established hope to create a Canada-wide network that will extend to alumni groups and professionals who have already established themselves in the legal field. A longer-term goal is to eventually host a national conference involving all SSA chapters.

Last year, the Osgoode Legal & Literary Society presented OSSA with its annual Student Club for Community Building Award.