For Immediate Release
August 15, 2008
QUÉBEC CITY – Toronto lawyer Ryan Teschner has been selected as the winner of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) 2008 Young Lawyers Pro Bono Service Award for outstanding legal services benefiting the community.
“The jury was very impressed with Ryan’s deep and multi-faceted commitment to pro bono and volunteer work, deep and multi-faceted” said Jim Rossiter, Chair of Young Lawyers-CBA. “While still fulfilling all of his responsibilities to the firm and his clients, this young man is also making tremendous contributions to his community.”
An associate in the Toronto offices of Heenan Blaikie LLP since 2006, Teschner is also developing an innovative partnership that will see the firm’s lawyers provide legal services to one of Toronto’s 13 priority neighbourhoods.
There is also an international dimension to Teschner’s pro bono work. Partnering with Canadian Lawyers Abroad, Teschner created and coordinated a project for the firm’s articling students and lawyers to assist the Kosovo Law Center in the publication of that country's Supreme Court decisions.
In Canada, Teschner led a review and redraft of Heenan Blaikie’s pro bono policy in 2007, and a new version has been adopted nationally.
While he was still a student at Heenan Blaikie, Teschner sought and obtained the firm’s support for a unique pilot project with the City of Toronto that would provide training and job opportunities to youth in at-risk neighbourhoods. The firm signed on, and over the past three years, Heenan Blaikie has hired and trained 16 post-secondary young adults under the program. The highly successful pilot project was taken up and expanded by the City of Toronto to become the Partnership to Advance Youth Employment, which now operates city-wide. The program continues to benefit from Teschner’s involvement.
Teschner received his bachelor of arts from the University of Toronto in 2002 and his bachelor of laws from Osgoode Hall Law School in 2005. He was called to the Ontario bar in 2006.
The CBA Young Lawyers Pro Bono Award recognizes outstanding pro bono publico ("for the public good") legal services to the community by a Canadian lawyer who is younger than 40 years old, or who has been in practice for fewer than 10 years. It takes the form of a $1,500 cash prize.
The award will be presented at the Closing Lunch, hosted by the Young Lawyers-CBA, at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008 in the Québec City Convention Centre, room 2000A, as part of the 2008 CBA Canadian Legal Conference. The event is open to accredited media who have registered with the CBA Media Centre.
The Canadian Bar Association is dedicated to improvement in the law and the administration of justice. Some 37,000 lawyers, law teachers, and law students from across Canada are members.
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CONTACT: Hannah Bernstein, Canadian Bar Association, Aug. 15-19, Québec City Convention Centre, room 2103, Tel: 418-649-5218; E-mail: hannahb@cba.org.
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