Ewa Krajewska

2Hi Pulat, nice to see you.

4Sure. So I was, I was born in Poland, in Warsaw. And I think that informs a lot about me and what I do today sometimes. I was born under martial law in Poland after Solidarity tried to rise up in the '80s, and then Jaruzelski brought in the army. Some people may argue he maybe brought in the army himself because he was afraid that otherwise Gorbachev would have. That's maybe a bit of revisionist history, but I was born under martial law in Poland. And in 1986, my parents decided to leave Poland because they never thought that communism would end for another 100 years. And they came to Canada. And I think, you know, they were looking to leave and Canada was one of the places that my dad got a position as a researcher at Sunnybrook Hospital in heart and stroke.

5And then my mom and me followed suit shortly thereafter. And, you know, they, my parents were young professionals. They were very patriotic. My dad finished his medical degree in Poland. My mom finished her law degree in Poland. And then like lots of places in Europe, the best students got appointed straight to the bench. So it was very difficult, different than in Canada where you only get appointed to the bench after like decades of practice and mentorship and guidance. My mom was a judge and they left that all behind because they were not sure about the future in Poland and the future for me and themselves. So that's kind of my, in a nutshell, my background.

7I was 4 years old, so I had never— I hadn't gone to school in Poland. And my parents sent me to, at first, an English school in Toronto. And then they were really under this impression that Canada was a bilingual country and that I had to learn French. They figured that I would learn English because by the fact of living in Toronto. So, when I was 6, after just having learned English, they sent me to a French school so that I would learn French. I don't remember a lot of that time of my childhood. My parents recall that it was very difficult for me, at least the first 4 months in the French school.

8And then at some point, I just got it and I absorbed it and I learned French and I was, I was fine. But they definitely tell me that there were moments where they really questioned their decision to send me to a French school. But I'm very, very grateful to them for having sent me to a French school because I don't think I would have probably enjoyed McGill Law as much as I did having not spoken French. And maybe I wouldn't have been able to have clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada had I not been bilingual. So I think they made the right choices even though they doubted themselves at that time.

10I have, I haven't, like, not probably to the full extent that I could have. I've definitely, I read factums in French. I read read evidence in French. I've spoken to clients in French, but I've never actually had the chance to represent a client in court in French. But, you know, I, there's just, I don't think there's that much French practice actually in Toronto. And where there is, there are, you know, there are fully Francophone lawyers who do that in Toronto, like my partner Christine Mainville, who does appeals in French.

12Yes, I still speak Polish with my parents. So my parents insisted that I speak Polish with them I was not really allowed to respond to them in English or speak to them in English. And I still speak Polish with them now. Although, you know, when people ask, you know, those surveys and questions and all types of things, they ask you, what's your mother tongue? And that's hard for me because my brain thinks in English. Like the thoughts going through my head are happening in English. I read, write, speak English on a daily basis. I can read Polish, but I don't, I can't write in Polish, not with the help of, you know, the technology today that suggests the correct spelling of words for you.

13So yeah, Polish is definitely very much still part of my life, but I never had the chance to speak to go to school in Polish. And part of that was because my parents lived downtown in Toronto and they attempted to send me to afterschool programs in Polish, but they were all in the suburbs and it was a very long commute. And I think it was, it was just a bit too much.

15So this is its own little story. At first my parents lived at 35 Charles Street, which is a building associated with the University of Toronto that is subsidized housing. And it's all my parents could afford at the beginning. In the beginning. And then after my dad was no longer a fellow of the University of Toronto, we had to leave 35 Charles. And there was a building down the street at 57 Charles where the superintendent was Polish. And so there was a small diaspora of Polish families who all lived in the same apartment building at 57 Charles Street. And that is where I made my best friends. That's where my parents made their best friends.

16And it was kind of a little unique community and universe. So I'm not a Polish person who grew up on Roncesvalles or Mississauga. I'm a person who grew up on Charles Street, which now is a very kind of, you know, elite upper-class part of the city, but that was not always the case.

18Her parents are from Poland. Yes.

20I don't think so. I don't think so. Her dad did his law degree at Jagiellonica University in Kraków. And yes, she had in her— she always carried in her office her dad's diploma from Jagiellonica. That was something that was very close to her heart because her dad was not able to practice law in Canada. And that was one of the reasons that she always says that she decided she wanted to be become a lawyer because he was not able to do so. So yeah, her family, her family is originally, is originally from Poland. And that was something that we kind of connected on during my clerkship interview.

23Interesting. I don't— so I don't— I'm not sure. I did read a lot. I liked reading. I liked reading especially issues around current affairs. And you know, I read a lot in English and in French. I don't know if it was really the love of language that led me to be a lawyer, but I think it was more the— I don't know, Pulat, if you have the same feeling coming from Eastern Europe, but discussing politics and public policy is not something that Eastern Europeans shy away from. And whether it's at the dinner table or with friends or otherwise, Polish people are not the type to just want to discuss the weather or do small talk.

24I think Polish people are the type of people who very quickly bare their heart to you or their politics to you. On all types of issues. And I think it was that context and those circumstances that led me to want to go to law school, which is I was very interested in policy debates, legal issues, how things are framed, how things are decided, who decides them, who's in power all of those things. I think, I mean, in undergrad I I studied economics, political science, and history. I kind of loved the social sciences, and in a sense, law is very much a social science. And I think it's all of that that really drew me into the law and probably informs a lot of my perspective on how I practice law today.

26I think, yeah, I think I always, I think I always felt that. I think my parents as immigrants wanted me more than anything to ensure that I had a stable source of income. I think they would have preferred that I become a doctor. They probably would have preferred that I study the sciences. Social sciences were kind of—

28Yeah, there was definitely a science pressure, but it wasn't because science was better or more rigorous. It was more of, I think immigrant parents are legitimately always concerned that their kids will do well, that they made the right choices, and their kids will be safe and secure, both kind of politically and economically. And so they— oh, my mom, I think my mom maybe even more than my dad always felt that I should become a doctor. My dad's a doctor. My dad redid all of his training once he came to Canada, redid his residency and became a doctor. My mom did not become a lawyer again. Instead, she became an immigration consultant. So now she helps other people come to Canada.

29But you know, it's interesting. My brother actually has become a doctor. And he, but I think he didn't, he didn't have like political or public policy inclinations. Like he, he would take my advice on that. He will, he will come to me for guidance on those issues, but he, like, even though, you know, it's interesting siblings, right. Or children where you come from the same household and yet you take different life paths. And he, he was not interested in the political debates or public policy debates we were having at the, at the dinner table. That did not that did not tug at his heart in any way. So, but you know, it's, it's fine.

30We still get along really well.

34I think that's all very true, Pulat. I mean, I didn't have somebody on the inside to kind of guide me or someone in my immediate circle who knew how to do these things. And you're right that like a lot of, you know, a lot of how I succeeded in high school or even how I prepared for economics exams versus poli-sci exams, wasn't perfectly transferable to law school. And I know in law school everybody said you need to have a good summary, you need to have a summary, you know, like your 100-page summary of all the torts cases, your 100-page summary of the constitutional cases. And I think in part my success came from talking to third-year students.

35McGill was quite good in terms of you had small groups that were run by third-year students for first-year students, both in foundations and in legal methodology. And I had a great tutorial leader in legal methodology. Her name is Michelle Dean. She was a great lawyer who worked at White & Case, and now she's a writer and a screenwriter in the United States, and she's just amazing. But she kind of suggested to all of us what you really need is like 3 or 4 pages of like a question and then an answer. Like, what is the test for an infringement of freedom of expression? And then like, the test is this with the case. So she gave us kind of her template for that, for constitutional law.

36And she said, this was really useful to me for exams because The 90-page summary of every single case is great and maybe a process that you need to go through, but for the exam, it's too big, too— and not quick enough to get to the right answers. So what you need is this smaller thing. And I used that, and it was very successful for me. I don't know if it will be successful for everybody, but I think having those relationships with third-year students who have done well and asking them what tools they used is really helpful. I also love doing study groups. I know some people hate study groups, but I liked to find the people in the class who were maybe— who I thought brought different skills, who looked like they did the readings, and who looked like they weren't obnoxiously opinionated.

37And I would just create a study group and say, like, let's meet together and talk about these things. So I think trying to create also kind of a nice collegial atmosphere with people that you get along with and trying to learn together is also really helpful.

39Yes, I mean, both at BLG, I was on the student committee for several years, and now at Henein Hutchison, because we're smaller, like the partners are just involved in the hiring committees and all the hiring decisions and the interviews. And, you know, it is I think hiring in law is difficult. I think I worry a lot, and I have been critical in the past that the typical interview process of just asking people about their interests and doing small talk is not really a great way of interviewing people. I mean, it may be fine for summer students, and then you see the summer students work and you see how they approach problems. Problems and you see how they get things done.

40But I find it strange that the standard, so-called, in law is to do these kind of unbenchmarked interviews, right? I think it does a disservice for the firm and I think it does a disservice for the students. I think, like, so at Henein Hutchison, we have Rose Yanko who does all the first year, all the first interviews. And she has a very standard practice. She asks the same interviews to all the candidates. And so I really kind of admire that she has a rigorous process where she does the first interview and then we do the second interview. And I think we always try to probe a little bit further. I think we probe for, you know, I often ask, like to ask the question, you know, people create resumes of accomplishments.

41What about a resume may have regrets, like what do you regret not doing? I like— we now like to ask for— I like to ask for a writing sample, and we sometimes like to ask for a very quick case comment on a case, like a very quick 500 words on a case, because I think it sometimes just really reveals how people see the law, how people read a case, what their impressions are. So I like to have things that are maybe a bit more standardized, because I think it's just more to the students. I know it sounds like it's tedious and a lot of work, but I think it hopefully moves to a better process.

43Oh no.

45Yeah, you can use it.

47I did a little bit in the medical malpractice context, but not— okay, other personal injury.

49Okay, so I think that's a really interesting question. It's one that younger associates or law students often ask me is, how do you build kind of a public law or constitutional law practice in private practice? Because, you know, many people, if they want to— if you— and I'll be honest, if you want to do exclusively public or constitutional law, then you need to work for the government. Or in some cases you have to do criminal defense as well, right? A lot of constitutional issues come up in criminal defense work, but from a pure, like, you know, if people think of like the Charter, then, you know, AG constitutional law branch in Ontario, the federal government more broadly.

50But on the private side, it can never be your full practice. I think that's unrealistic, but you can build it to be part part of your practice. So, I was lucky in the sense that I got recruited to BLG by Chris Brett, who had a public law practice because Dennis O'Connor had had one, and it was kind of part of the ethos at BLG that this is something that lawyers at BLG did. And Chris just said, well, you gotta like, you gotta write in the area, you gotta join organizations that do this, that where like-minded lawyers are found. So I joined the Ontario Bar Association's Constitutional and Civil Law Section. I, I wrote papers or I co-authored them with Chris.

51And also you got to do some intervention work, right? You got to do some intervention work for— so I did intervention work for the CCLA and I still I still do for other organizations like HALCO, the HIV/AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario, ISAC, the Income Security Action Clinic, all of these, this type of work. And then I think you also have to look at areas or industries that are kind of adjacent to constitutional law where it comes up. So like, maybe I'm not the best example of this, but like if you think of about Justice Rouleau, before he was appointed to the bench, a lot of his clients were school boards, and he did a lot of work in the education sector.

52And then from that, he did language rights litigation around Section 23 of the Charter, right? So that, like, so that was a very nice kind of synchronicity between his one client base with his kind of constitutional practice. And I had, you know, I've had that as well, where I've worked, I think a lot of the regulatory areas, whether it's energy litigation, education law, health law, a lot of them give rise to lots of public law matters. So those are kind of, that's how I see it. You have to, you have to try to, if you're good at writing, write papers, offer to present the papers at conferences, Join sections of the OBA or the Advocates Society that are doing— where like-minded people are doing constitutional work.

53Reach out to public interest groups that are interested in doing intervention work on important legal cases and start to develop relationships with them and, you know, do work for them. And then, you know, and then you You also get paid work in this area, especially if you're representing clients that are highly regulated clients, including corporations, where the regulatory landscape is often changing because it's an area that's political or it's an area that's important or otherwise. And so like most recently, I think I did a lot of the public law that I've done recently has been in the context of COVID right? Like the COVID pandemic led to the declaration of emergency legislation, emergency declarations.

54And I just, I think part of it was just like, maybe my parents were right. I should have become a doctor and I would have been much more helpful during COVID So I was like, well, I want to be helpful and all I have are these legal skills. So I'm going to become an expert on all these emergency measures and I'm going to I'm going to write about it. I'm going to podcast about it because I want to feel helpful and useful. And that, you know, that leads to work. And that led to me doing the first ever Zoom hearing, challenging one of the restrictions on visitor policies at a hospital, right? So that— this is— sometimes it's also just being really honest with yourself about what you are passionate about and then leveraging that passion to do work in it because you're gonna really enjoy the work and you're gonna feel like you're making a difference.

59Yeah, so I, I mean I might dispute it a little bit. I'm not sure if I'm as paranoid about the government. I think, I think in terms of, I mean, I probably have a lot of healthy skepticism about where some policies come from, but I think my drive around this stuff really comes from, I think, a more idealized idea of wanting to make things better, this idea that public policy can improve people's lives. And maybe even an idealized— and I'm very cognizant of this, like, you know, this idea of the Charter changing people's lives, I think is also sometimes a very dangerous idea. You need to make sure that you have kind of public opinion on, like, also on board with some of the changes, right?

60I don't— I think there's a, you know, how much can the courts help you versus, How much do you also need to ensure that public policy and opinion changes at the same time? But I think most of them, because I've also in a lot of constitutional litigation also acted for actually the respondent, like I've acted for the Leaders' Debate Commission, I've acted for the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, I've acted for Trillium Gift of Life defending their policies. And so I don't, so their policies or their decisions, and so I actually also have quite a bit of empathy for decision makers in terms of how they get to those decisions. And I think a lot of the law in this area is also just trying to get decision makers to be more transparent, more rational, and more more— and, and better justify their decisions to the public.

61And it's kind of like this old idea, you know, like people I think in contract law, like Lon Fuller said, the purpose of contract is to help people work things out. The purpose of writing down a contract is so you go through the process of thinking through every item of the contract. And I feel like a decision maker writing reasons or a government making a decision, that process of writing the reasons and making the decision, that process should help make the decision better. Because hopefully, if you can't write the decision and rationalize it, It's because you're getting to a bad outcome, right? And what we want to avoid is bad outcomes. And so I think I have a healthy skepticism about it, but my hope or my ideal is that the law provides a constraint around that so that we actually get to better decisions, better policies, and more transparency.

62I'm a big fan of transparency. Maybe that's very Eastern European of me.

64it

66Oh, but no one's likely to think of.

68well, I mean, there's no caviar. Let's just— let me just put that out there.

70people. Yeah, no, that we like śledź, right? Herring.

72yeah,

74Who doesn't? So I mean, it was a very difficult decision to change firms after 13 years. I really, I am extremely grateful for my time at BLG, my colleagues and everything else. And I, like, the truth is it just, I felt I'm a, maybe this is also like a weird immigrant kid thing. I'm kind of, I'm a bit risk averse about stuff. And, you know, the decision to make a drastic change in my career is not, not an easy one for someone like me. But sometimes when I have a difficult decision to make, what I ask myself is, what would I regret not doing? And I feel like I kind of said to myself, 10 years from now, if I didn't join Henein Hutchison, I would be like, what was wrong with you?

75Like, why didn't you just, why didn't you just take this risk and go for it? Like, You know, I think that was really— I had to kind of kick myself in the butt to do that because it is taking me out of my— it is taking me a little bit out of my comfort zone in terms of like, it's easy. I think for all of us, it's easy to have some inertia and it's hard. I think for all of us, it's hard to make change happen. So it was really that thought process, like I am going— I'm going to look back 10 years from now and be like, you know, Ewa, why didn't you kick yourself in the butt and just do this?

77Sure. So I think, I mean, one of the attractions was to continue to kind of be have like a broad barrister-like practice. Like, I, you know, I— maybe it is a bit of a combination of liking the diversity of legal problems and also a bit of, you know, fear of missing out. But I like having a diverse practice and not being— not overly specializing. So what do I do now? So we talked about public law and constitutional law. So I'm still doing a lot of that. And that's That's fabulous. I've always had an estates practice, an estates litigation practice that I kind of fell into at BLG and really enjoyed, mostly because I like the combination of kind of old English case law and the kind of emotional elements of managing families through very difficult problems.

78You know, like I think of myself as someone who has good EQ and empathy and that can, can handle that kind of stuff. The stuff that I've added now to my practice really is I'm doing investigations, which are really interesting, really interesting to do investigations you know, helping out company both for companies or institutions or representing individuals who are the subject of an investigation. And I, like, you know, one of the reasons that I love litigation is every case is like a window into a universe that you would never normally know anything about. It's kind of like a, you know, a very in-depth New Yorker article. And an investigation is kind of a window into a problem or a set of problems in a certain industry, and then investigating that finding out if there's a problem or not a problem, and then recommending solutions to it, which again, going back to my like public policy, I want to fix things, I want to make the world a better place kind of thing, is really nicely aligned with that.

79And then the other thing that I do now that I hadn't done before is both being on the plaintiff side and the defense side of civil civil sexual assault claims. And so, and I think that's just kind of, that is very much kind of just aligns with the other work that the firm does. And that again, also, you know, very interesting legal problems, lots of emotional issues as well. So it's great. I like, you know, I am the kind of person who's going to be, I think, a lifelong learner, and I don't like being bored, and I like being challenged. So it's, it's working really nicely for me.

81I think, I think that's, I think that's probably the most obvious example, but I think investigation work is another example of that. I think there's a lot of, a lot of situations also where, you know, we live in a, a very highly regulatory state where you really have kind of like the criminal law, then you have like regulatory law, whether it's disciplinary proceedings or human courts, tribunals, and then you have the private law. And so like I kind of do the civil and regulatory work and a lot of the criminal lawyers do the criminal and regulatory work and we kind of meet in the middle on a lot of these things. And, you know, any potential, a lot of our potential cases can start at one end, but over the years may have to work their way through the system and other ends, or maybe something starts as a regulatory issue.

82Issue, but it also raises criminal concerns and may lead to a civil suit, right? Like, a lot of the problems that come up in society today will be addressed through many different legal mechanisms over time. And so I think one thing that our firm does really well is it's able to immediately identify how a certain problem can lead to all those issues and how you need to really proactively think about those issues when the problem comes through the door, right? And if you only have like a— if you have a much narrower lens, you might miss that there may be all these downstream problems in the future.

85So sometimes, like, a lot of the time, lawyers will act as the investigator themselves. So for example, you know, you, you have a company and they get a whistleblower complaint, right? A lot of companies now have whistleblower lawyer mechanisms, or they have ombudsmen, and they receive a, they receive a complaint, and it might be a very significant complaint about either, you know, some kind of corporate misfeasance, or maybe some kind of a practice just being off at a corporation. And the, either the management or the board of a corporation will want to retain a lawyer to get to the bottom of this. Like, you know, is, is this a real issue? Is this a real problem?

86Is there evidence that this is happening? And if it is, how are we going to address it? Even either, you know, it maybe is like a singular complaint against a singular person, or is it a larger complaint of like, our systems aren't working properly here? And then making recommendations on how to fix that. And so, so there's that aspect where the lawyer acts as investigator. And then there's the aspect of a client gets, you know, a client finds out you're the subject of an investigation. It is alleged that you've done X, Y, and Z. We want to interview you. And then we will advise the client and prepare them for the interview or tell them they should, like, you know, whatever needs to be done to, to handle that investigation.

87So it's, it's a very, you know, it's like, I think, a kind of a unique process because It's not the usual adversarial process we're used to in our civil system, right? It's much more of an inquisitorial process.

89Yeah, no caviar, no limousines. I mean, you know, I think what's— I think what's really nice about the practice of law is it's actually a pretty small bar here in Toronto, and the long you practice, the more you see familiar faces, the more, you know, you go out to an event and you catch up with people and you've been opposite side of files together, but you know each other, or you know each other and then you're opposite files with each other. And I think that, I think you wouldn't necessarily think that the Toronto litigation bar can, like, you would think it's too big and too disparate and to really kind of have meaningful colleagues or meaningful friendships, but it really isn't.

90I think it's kind of a one-degree of separation kind of place. And it is nice to see people like, you know, Jenny and I went yesterday to an event, a Malaparte hosted by another law firm, and it was just great to like run into people that we haven't seen in a while and talk about the case we had together 3 years ago, right? It's— I think there are some really nice parts of the bar, and I'd like recommend to like young associates and summer students to, to be, you know, to look out for those opportunities by joining professional associations, and also for being patient that that is going to happen.

92Thanks, Pulat. It's been a pleasure. Have a great afternoon and weekend.