Challenge Committee
Emmanuelle Amar
Emmanuelle Amar is a member of the Quebec Bar and holds a Masters in International Law from the University of Montreal. Her interests include access to justice, international humanitarian law, and international development. She is currently a Scientific Coordator at Cyberjustice Laboratory of the University of Montreal, where she focuses on the role that information technology and communication can have on access to justice. She previously worked for the Research Network on Peace Operations as an assistant for research and advisory services on international humanitarian law of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva as an intern. She also worked in the field of refugee law.
Nicole Aylwin
Nicole Aylwin is the Assistant Director of the Winkler Institute for Dispute Resolution, Assistant Director of Research at Osgoode Hall Law School and a Research Fellow at the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice. As a passionate advocate for access to justice, Nicole has led several local and national research projects that examine the cost, affordability and the effectiveness of the civil justice system in Canada. She is a co-editor of the Journal for Arbitration and Mediation and she frequently speaks and writes on the topics of innovation and creative problem solving, technology and access to justice. She is also an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where she teaches courses on access to justice, legal services design and legal technology.
Nicole’s current research explores how design thinking may be used to address complex or « wicked » problems such as access to justice.
Francis Barragan
Francis Barragan has degrees in both Civil and Common Law. He was admitted to the Quebec Bar as a lawyer in 2004. After his internship, he started studying for a Master’s in business law while also working on various mandates for a law firm. In 2007, Francis joined a federal commission of inquiry on national security matters. He later became in-house counsel for a notfor-profit organization. Francis Barragan joined Éducaloi in 2011 as a website writer. He creates legal information resources for the general public.
Natasha Brown
Born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Natasha Brown received her Bachelor of Education in 2001 and her Bachelor of Laws in 2005. She was called to the Bar in Manitoba in 2006. Following her call, Natasha worked in private practice, exclusively in the area of family law, until the fall of 2012, at which point she became the Family Law Supervisor at the Legal Help Centre of Winnipeg, Inc. (« LHC »). In late summer of 2014, Natasha became LHC’s Legal Director. Natasha is currently a sessional instructor at the University of Manitoba, Faculty of Law, teaching Advocacy and acting as Supervising Lawyer for the law school’s LHC Internship program. Natasha also sits on the Board of the Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education.
Patrick Gingras
Patrick Gingras holds a bachelor of civil law (LL.B.) from the Université de Sherbrooke, a master of laws (LL.M.) specializing in information technology from the Université de Montréal, a master of business administration (MBA) with specialization in e-business from Université Laval, as well as a certificate in cyber-investigation from the École Polytechnique de Montréal.
He practices law at the Department of Justice Quebec mainly in the fields of intellectual property and technology. Patrick also participates, as a member of the Canadian delegation, in the work of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) – Working Group IV: Electronic Commerce. He is also on part-time assignment as an expert in information technology law to the Hague Conference on Private International Law and to the technological module of the Sûreté du Québec (provincial police force).
Patrick teaches at various universities and is a regular speaker for judges, lawyers, professional associations and government agencies. He is also the author of many publications on law and information technology, including the book « Actes illicites sur Internet: Qui et comment poursuivre? » (in French) (Éditions Yvon Blais, 2011) and the newsletter « Technologies de l’information En bref » (in French) published three times per year (Éditions Yvon Blais).
Rajah Lehal
Rajah Lehal is a legal technologist, a lawyer, and is the Founder and CEO of Clausehound.com.
Rajah received his M.B.A. and J.D. degrees from Western University’s Richard Ivey School of Business and Faculty of Law, respectively. During his studies, Rajah was the Co-President of Entrepreneurs@Ivey, a student-run entrepreneurship group, and, assisted Professor Richard McLaren with the launch of the Western Business Law Clinic. Rajah also received an Honours Philosophy degree from the University of Waterloo, where his studies included significant Mathematics and Computer Science coursework.
Following his undergraduate education, Rajah worked for more than a decade in the information technology industry, including three years in software development and seven years as an Information Systems and Technology manager at both a major telecommunications company and at a financial services company. Following his transition into the legal sector, Rajah received his legal training with the corporate law group at Stikeman Elliott LLP. Subsequently, Rajah gained international legal experience with the Technology Media and Telecom group in the Dubai office of Clyde & Co., after which he founded Cobalt Lawyers, a technology law firm in Toronto.
Rajah is presently the CEO of Clausehound.com, a DIY cloud-based legal drafting and design software tool. In addition to Rajah’s legal and technology experience, he sits on the board of directors of MultiplicityTO, is on the Toronto Executive of LegalHackers.org, and is the Canadian Responsible Leaders Chapter Head for the BMW Foundation.
Julie Mathews
Since 1999, Julie Mathews has served as the Executive Director of CLEO, an organization that provides legal rights information and education to communities across Ontario that face barriers to participating in the justice system due to low income, language, literacy, disability, isolation, and other disadvantages. Julie has led CLEO in carrying out a range of innovative initiatives, including several research projects that look at methods for improving the effectiveness of public legal education and information.
She has been the driving force behind:
- Connecting Communities – a project that aims to increase the capacity of community organizations to provide legal information to linguistic minorities or those who live in rural or remote communities.
- PLE Learning Exchange – an interactive website that showcases research and resources relating to effective public legal education and provides an online space for organizations to build partnerships.
- Evolving Legal Services – a ground-breaking research project that aims to empirically evaluate when public legal education is valuable as a stand-alone service and when it needs to be paired with other supports.
Julie is past President of the Public Legal Education Association of Canada, having completed three terms in this position. Her previous experience includes work as a lawyer in private practice, as a policy analyst for the Ontario government, as a researcher for a large non-profit advocacy organization, and as an assistant to a United States Senator. She is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and the State Bar of California. In November 2015, Julie was named the named the recipient of the 2015 Guthrie Award by The Law Foundation of Ontario.
Karima Smouk
Karima Smouk is a doctoral candidate in law at the Université de Montréal. Her research focuses on the military use of IT and cyberspace, under the supervision of Professor Karim Benyekhlef (Director of the Cyberjustice Laboratory). Specialized in human rights and the law of war, she’s interested in how cyber is changing military and strategical mentalities, and how international law is not adapted to that context.
She holds a Law Degree, a Master 1 in Public Law and a Master 2 in International and European Public Law. She began her doctoral courses within the Faculty of Law of the University of Montreal in winter 2013.
Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 25 novembre 2016 à 15 h 48 min.