Toronto Associates

Our Commitment To...

Community Involvement and Pro Bono

We enjoy a long tradition of pro bono and community service work. With the firm's support, many of our lawyers and staff make a significant contribution to the community. Students and junior lawyers, in particular, are encouraged to support causes and initiatives for which they have energy and passion. In 2006 we became a founding member of Imagine Canada, a nationally recognized organization geared towards promoting programs that encourage corporate giving, volunteering and community support. Imagine Canada challenges corporations to give back 1% of their pre-tax profits to the community as well as to become more involved in their communities through volunteer work.

Community Involvement

Toronto students, lawyers and staff participate in and volunteer for events which support a number of initiatives designed to make our community better, including:

Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Canada
Breast Cancer Foundation Awareness Campaign
Camp Oochigeas (for children with cancer)
Canadian Cancer Society Relay for Life
Children's Aid Society
Discovery House
Give a Day to World AIDS campaign
Governor General's Performing Arts Awards National Committee
Habitat for Humanity
The Humane Society
Junior Achievement of Canada
Movember
Off Centre Music
Order of the Business Hall of Fame Constitution
Pathways to Education
Seneca College
Terry Fox Run for Cancer Research in New York City and Toronto
Toronto Community Foundation
The United Way
Walk for Kids Help Phone
Winter Hope Clothing Drive
YWCA of Toronto

Firm Initiatives

The firm's "Going Green" program launch has included new initiatives designed to encourage Stikeman Elliot's environmental stewardship, including distribution of re-useable shopping bags to employees and a carbon footprint calculation.
Stikeman Elliott offices participate in week-long campaigns to support the United Way. These events are an annual highlight for our lawyers and staff. In 2009, the firm raised over $425, 000 for United Way in our communities.
Many of our lawyers act as directors on several boards, including the Kidney Foundation, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, William Osler Health Centre Foundation; the YWCA Toronto; and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, to name a few.
We are a corporate partner of the Pathways to Education program, whose mission is to ensure that young people from at-risk and/or economically disadvantaged communities achieve their full potential by getting to school, staying in school, graduating and moving on to post-secondary programs.

Pro Bono Services

Our Toronto office has provided pro bono legal services to many worthwhile community organizations, including:

Foster Parents Plan Canada (Plan Canada)
Sierra Club of Canada - Ontario Chapter
Canadian Association for Community Living and Community Living Ontario
Council for Canadians with Disabilities
Junior Achievement of Canada
Wen-Do Canada
Osgoode Business Law Clinic
Plan International Canada Inc.
Habitat for Humanity
Canadian Italian Business & Professional Association
Global Foodbanking Network
Wildlife Conservancy
Kids.Now
Autism Society of Canada
Nature Conservancy
First Nations Child & Family Caring Society
UN Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights
Toronto International Arts Festival (LUMINATO)
Foundation for International Community Assistance Canada
Canadian Croatian Chamber of Commerce
Boost Butterfly Foundation
50 Plus Canada Works

For more information on our commitments to Community and Pro Bono initiatives, please click here.

Diversity Initiatives

Stikeman Elliott is committed to diversity amongst its lawyers, students, and staff and we want to ensure that all firm members are supported, valued and respected. In his address about the firm's defining principles at our 50th Anniversary Retreat, Dick Pound encouraged us to: "Never lose sight of the need for diversity among us. We will need the broadest range of talents and backgrounds as we face a national and international future. Embrace and seek out differences; do not reject them."

As part of our commitment, our Diversity Committee, which consists of partners, associates, and firm management members, meets monthly to discuss our ongoing initiatives. Within the firm, we support our students and lawyers from diverse communities through initiatives that include: our mentorship programme; informal lunches with Diversity Committee members; career development sessions; regular reviews of our internal processes and policies to ensure that they are in line with diversity principles; multicultural themed events; and diversity-related sessions with our various student and lawyer groups.

The firm is also involved in several outreach initiatives as part of our ongoing commitment to diversity in the legal profession. Our lawyers regularly visit law and high schools to speak about law and diversity issues, we invite members of such groups to visit our firm to meet with our lawyers, and we also provide funding to student and community groups that support diversity in the profession. We are currently actively involved with the Pathways to Education Program by engaging in the following: inviting Pathways high school students to visit the firm for organized tours; mentoring students in the programme; hiring Pathways high school students for administrative summer positions; and, sponsoring Pathways events.

Women's Initiatives

At Stikeman Elliott, we are immensely proud of the role that women lawyers play at the firm - both as role models and as leaders in their areas of practice. We recognize that each student, associate and partner is unique and that each woman brings with her unique experiences and perspectives to the practice of law. We encourage this diversity in our women lawyers (and in all our lawyers) and know our clients do too. Moreover, we recognize the importance of providing resources to support our women collectively and to assist with their individual career goals. We currently have a range of initiatives in place to enhance the recruitment, retention and advancement of women in the firm.

Our initiatives encompass both leadership/business development programs for women, as well as policies and programs to support family obligations and work-life balance.

Some of our specific programs and policies include:

marketing and business development events for women
skills training focussed on helping women develop and build their practices, including public speaking, communication and team/project management (a number of our female associates attended the Rotman School of Management intensive course on Business Leadership for Women Lawyers)
individual career and business development coaching
mentor programs involving both women and men as mentors for women
group networking and events for women clients
training for interviewers, mentors and new hires which includes sensitivity to gender and diversity issues
written policies on maternity leave, flexible hours arrangements, and harassment and discrimination
individual transition coaching for women returning from maternity leave a home technology stipend for all lawyers and students, together with state-of-the-art remote access and after-hours technical support and administrative assistance available to those working from home
an active Diversity Committee and an ongoing commitment across our Students, Associates, Management and Diversity Committees to gathering feedback and continuously improving all of our programs and support

Our Sub-Committee on Womens' Initiatives, which is comprised of male and female members from our Diversity, Students, Associates and Management committees, is focussed on staying on top of issues important to our female lawyers and developing programs to help them succeed at the firm.

Our percentage of women equity partners in Toronto is 20%, which is amongst the top levels in leading Toronto firms and is well ahead of the 15% mark cited as the profession's average in the recent report by the National Association of Women Lawyers in the US. Women hold leadership positions within our office as practice group leaders, Committee Chairs, members of our Partnership Board and Management Committee, and at the highest levels of management. In addition, 40% of our current students and associates are women, and we are committed to providing all possible opportunities to help our women advance at the firm.

In addition to their dynamic legal practices, our women lawyers are committed to the community, their families (75% of our women partners have children), pro bono work and other outside interests and pursuits. We encourage you to speak to our female lawyers about their individual practices and experiences at the firm.

Knowledge Management and Technology

Knowledge Management

At Stikeman Elliott, we are proud of our position as a leader in knowledge management. Our longstanding commitment to knowledge management distinguishes us from other Canadian business law firms. We want our clients to benefit from our collective legal experience, and we work to ensure our lawyers have immediate and easy access to the firm's significant intellectual capital.

Our associates benefit from:

A group of full-time KM lawyers who develop leading edge precedents, keep our students and lawyers up to date on recent legal developments, provide advice on complex issues, and work with our students and lawyers to develop their analytical and drafting skills.
A collection of cutting-edge precedents, reflecting the latest legal and business developments, as well as a legal research collection with over 10,000 documents.
An extensive electronic and print library collection, with a friendly and professional library team providing the training, reference and research support needed to make the best use of it.
STELLA, an innovative portal-based intranet, and STELLA KM, our in-house, faceted, searchable knowledge management system. STELLA and STELLA KM provide our students and lawyers access to all of our in-house resources in a contextualized way, and organized and by practice group, legal topic and industry.

Technology

We have a very strong commitment to technology. Keeping our technology strategy aligned with the firm's business strategy ensures that our lawyers have all the tools they need to best serve their clients. The firm's unified communications and mobile technology solutions provide remote access to the firm's resources (applications, data, knowledge and people) from anywhere at any time.

The Environment

Stikeman Elliott's GoingGreen Program, officially launched on March 25, 2008, is part of our continuing effort to reduce the environmental impact of our day-to-day operations. The Program involves the firm wide implementation of market-leading environmental best practices, co-ordinated by a Green Committee with membership from a broad cross-section of firm members. Strategies implemented to date include:

Launching a firm-wide recycling program (including paper, cans, bottles, toner, batteries, electronic waste, organic waste and office supplies)
Implementing duplex printing as the firm-wide standard (saved over 6 million sheets of paper in 2009)
Eliminating bottled water, paper plates and plastic cutlery in all offices
Installing lighting motion sensors "Sleep modes" installed on all office printers and copiers to conserve energy
Replacing standalone units with energy efficient multifunction printer machines (used to copy, print and scan)
Cleaning up local parks and distributing tree saplings to office tenants on Earth Day and Arbour Day (Calgary office)
Reducing lighting levels in common areas and adjusting temperatures to reduce energy use
Enabling and promoting video conferencing in all offices to reduce travel requirements
Donating unused food to local food banks
Adopting environmental purchasing policy to give preference to vendors with sound environmental practices
Through our collective efforts, received the certification as a Carbon Neutral Company for our Canadian offices, making Stikeman Elliott the first national Canadian law firm to earn that distinction.

Additional initiatives include efforts to reduce paper use through electronic reporting and filing, electronic file management, electronic reimbursements and the production of electronic closing books and using energy efficient equipment in all areas of the firm.

These programs are accompanied by efforts to increase awareness of broader environmental issues among all of our firm members. Recent initiatives include:

Distribution of GoingGreen eNewsletters & launching a GoingGreen blog
Participation in Earth Hour & Earth Day
Taking on the Défi-climat/Nature Challenge, whereby employees are encouraged to take concrete action on a daily basis to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions
Participation in Pollution Probe's Clean Air Commute (2008, 2009, 2010)
An event featuring environmentalist David Suzuki hosted by our Montréal office
Conducting a second firm-wide carbon footprint study to determine the firm's carbon footprint & impact from related green initiatives and programs (the first study was completed in 2008).

In 2010 Stikeman Elliott was selected as one of The Green 30 - Canada's 30 Greenest Employers, as selected by Maclean's and Canadian Business magazine, in partnership with Hewitt Associates. The award represents a culmination of the firm's efforts to fully integrate environmental stewardship into our operations and values.

By streamlining operations, sponsoring relevant environmental programs and encouraging individual participation at the firm, Stikeman Elliott continues to remain at the forefront of corporate social responsibility initiatives in the legal industry.