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The most famous lawyer in the country is coming to Halifax.
Marie Henein, of Toronto’s Henein Hutchison LLP, will be the keynote speaker at the Atlantic Women in Litigation conference, taking place May 5 at the Prince George Hotel on Market Street.
Already a formidable legal expert, Henein became a household name over the last several months while representing Jian Ghomeshi in the former CBC host’s sexual assault trial. Her ruthlessly effective court tactics were instrumental in Ghomeshi’s acquittal last month, but have also led to outraged criticism.
Successfully defending Ghomeshi in the most public trial in Canadian history has caused some to call Henein a symbol of a broken justice system for victims of sexual assault. Others, more colourfully, have called her anti-feminist and a “traitor to her gender.”
She’s handled those attacks with an unflinching confidence, leaving Mansbridge-sized craters in her wake. But it’s undeniable that—more than usual for a successful woman—Henein’s career has become inseparable from her gender. Pretty timely then to be speaking at a conference for female lawyers.
Put on by the Toronto-based Advocates’ Society, the biennial Women in Litigation conference assembles some of the brightest legal minds across Canada to network and take part in panel talks on topics around women working in the justice system. Programs on the agenda include being an effective advocate, “forging your own style,” and “How are Women Doing: The Regulator’s Perspective.” Henein’s keynote address is entitled “Turning Points in My Career.”
This isn’t the first time Henein has visited Nova Scotia, of course. She famously worked with her mentor Edward Greenspan in the late ’90s to acquit former premier Gerald Regan of sexual assault charges.
As the WIL brochure notes, Henein is a frequent lecturer on the legal circuit who appears often at events put on by the Law Society of Upper Canada, the Ontario Bar Association and several other groups including the Advocates’ Society.
Early bird registration for the Atlantic Women in Litigation conference is available now at $361 for Advocates’ Society members, or $464 for the rest of us non-member lawyers and law students.
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This article appears in Apr 7-13, 2016.
She is hardly formidable. She lucked out. The prosecution blew it. N
They hardly handed the win to her. Some attorneys would have blown it, I’m sure.
Or maybe a) they didn’t really have a case, or b) the victims fucked up and fucked their own case up? At any rate, she’s a kick ass attorney and women should be proud.
“… a traitor to her gender”. Should that not be sex? I’m so confused now…
I think the traitors are those who make false accusations. When their lies are uncovered, the damage done to those who really suffered from crimes is immense; it immediately discredits everyone’s experience.
Women should appreciate and be proud of Ms. Henein.
Feminists and SJWs, get your torches and pitchforks. Time to focus all that eternal outrage!
trai·tor – ˈtrādər/ noun. noun: traitor; plural noun: traitors
a person who betrays a friend, country, principle, etc. through lies, deceit, or truth.
Marie Henein used her knowledge of the law to get Jian Ghomeshi off the hook. Amazingly, the judge didn’t consider the evidence Ghomeshi offered up to the CBC or on his Facebook page. Ms. Henein just did what she was hired to do, just like she did when she & Ed Greenspan got Gerald Regan off the hook.
You might hope that she would do something to improve the law and that would help convict abusers, or murderers, or whomever she’s defending, but in the scheme of things, that’s not her job. Maybe winning cases one after another will bring awareness to the fact that the law is flawed.
It is the prosecutors’ job to present compelling evidence that they know will stand up to Ms. Henein’s formidable skills. They didn’t.
Well
I’ll just add the seventh consecutive comment from a male.
Go team!!!!
This sentence in your article is very misleading: “Others, more colourfully, have called her anti-feminist and a “traitor to her gender.”” The two links go to articles which do not contain the phrases you have in quotes. In fact neither article is particularly damning of Heinen. It seems you are attempting to stir the pot by steering discussion towards a ‘women beware women’ theme. Our justice system’s inability to deal with sexual violence is staggering when you look at statistics. Heinen is not the problem, she is a brilliant apparatchik making a profitable living by working within the system as it is. The system is the problem.
FYI, MaryColinChisholm, both of the comments you mention are in the sources linked to. I just read them there. You’re right that they aren’t “particularly damning” though. This doesn’t mean the Coast isn’t trying to “stir the pot”, although if they are, it isn’t very vigorously.
I also agree that the justice system is sorely lacking in the tools to deal with sexual violence. It would be good for Henein to use her ‘genius’ to do something about this problem rather than exploit it to protect abusers. Each to their own, I suppose.
True, thanks for the correction – the rabble article uses the quote “traitor to her sex” as a link to the chatelaine article and the full quote there is “Is Marie Henein a traitor to her gender for taking on — and winning — the sexual assault case of Jian Ghomeshi? This is a rhetorical question and a silly one at that.” So neither article makes the accusation they actually raise it to dismiss it. In her article Murphy (the Rabble) agrees with Heinen on some points and opines that a man would not be criticized in the same way as well she acknowledges Heinen’s skill and says that withall, she is “not a feminist’, she later refers to Heinen’s work as anti-feminist. I will be ignoring Ms. Heinen’s visit – the turning points in her career might be turning points for my stomach.
Marke, I guess you’re not aware of Ms. Henein’s pro-bono work for sex-trade workers in the Bedford case. She is a true feminist: talented, confident, does her job properly, and she refuses to succumb to victim culture, which is one of the greatest problems with the self-described “feminists” now attacking her.