If there’s a word to describe the three years Michael Coleman (Law’17), spent as a student at Queen’s Law, it’s “transformative.” 

Not only did he earn his JD degree and emerge from the experience a changed person, he also left an important legacy when he co-founded a Queen’s chapter of the Black Law Students’ Association (BLSA) of Canada. 

Today, Coleman is thriving in his role as an associate with Toronto-based Fogler, Rubinoff LLP, where he works in the firm’s commercial real estate and banking groups. But he still marvels at how much his life has changed since his first day of law school in September 2014. 

Coleman was 22 then. While earning an Honours BA from York University, he’d hoped to have a future in law.

“I was inspired by my Grade 12 law teacher who shared positive stories about being a lawyer, and I was always encouraged by my immediate family and (now) fiancée, Schenelle Dias,” he says. “I developed a strong sense that I wanted a legal career. That was something no one else in my family had ever accomplished.”

Coleman was the third of four children born to Jamaican-born immigrant parents. After coming to Canada in the early 1980s, his father, Fedrick, toiled as a transportation dispatcher, his mother, Evadne as a personal support worker. The Colemans worked hard to build better lives for themselves and for their children; education was integral to that goal.

Choosing Queen's

Coleman chose Queen’s Law for two reasons. One was the legacy of Robert Sutherland (c1830-1878), the brilliant Jamaican-born man who was the first black graduate of Queen’s, the first black lawyer in British North America, and one of the university’s most important early benefactors.

“I found his story particularly inspiring,” Coleman says.

A second reason was the collegial approach to learning at the school.

“The students support each other, and the professors are passionate about the subjects they teach," he says. "They challenge you intellectually while encouraging you to think, question, and consider all sides of an issue. That’s something that has stayed with me, and that I try to do in my practice.”

Coleman learned critical legal skills and more at Queen’s Law while finding his way. He began first-year intent on a career in criminal or administrative law; however, a tax course taught by Professor Art Cockfield (Law’93), fired his imagination and nudged him in a different direction.

“That’s one of the great things about Queen’s Law,” Coleman says. “Students are exposed to and have opportunities to experience different areas of the law.” 

At the same time his career goals were changing, he made some big changes personally, becoming “a lot more mindful” of what he was eating and beginning a running-based exercise regimen that helped him drop 90 pounds.   

Giving back to the community

As if all that wasn’t challenging enough, Coleman somehow made time and found the energy to continue “giving back to the community.” This is something his role models have always done, and he has followed their example. In his graduating year at Queen’s Law, Coleman was named to the Agnes Benidickson Tricolour Society for his volunteer efforts with Queen’s Legal Aid, for serving as a math and English tutor for inmates at Collins Bay Institution, and for co-founding BLSA-Queen’s.

The latter is an organization that Coleman discovered in October of first year, that he’s still proudly involved with and that he’s delighted to see active at Queen’s Law.

“The BLSA provides me with ongoing opportunities to mentor black law students and to network with other black Queen’s Law alumni,” he says, noting two in particular: Justice Donald McLeod (Law’95) of the Ontario Court of Justice, the first black Queen’s Law grad to be called to the bench, and Frank Walwyn (Law’93) of WeirFoulds LLP, who’s one of the first black partners at a Bay Street law firm.

“I’ve benefited from the friendships that I made at Queen’s Law and from the rich alumni network that’s out there,” says Coleman. “I’ll always feel a strong connection to the school.” 

By Ken Cuthbertson (Law’83)

When trying to determine how to sentence a guilty party, a judge will often look at precedent to determine an appropriate judgement. This can take time, as the judge and his or her staff pore over records and try to make a fair assessment.

But what if the technology existed to analyze hundreds, if not thousands, of similar cases quickly and build a fair judgement much faster?

Even better, what if this technology was affordable enough to be accessible in cases where hiring a lawyer was prohibitively expensive? What if you could use it when an eBay transaction goes wrong, or if you could use it even if you lived remotely and didn’t have access to a lawyer?

Enter the Intelligent Dispute Resolution System, a product of the Queen’s Law and Smith School of Business Conflict Analytics Lab. This AI-powered tool, already under development, would be capable of offering legal predictions to self-represented litigants along with negotiation support.

The “AI-Tribunal for Small Claims: Building an Intelligent Dispute Resolution System” project recently received $244,562 in funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to develop the first components of the pilot research: severance calculation predictive models, and an intelligent system for algorithmic employment negotiation.

“This is the core project of the Conflict Analytics Lab because it is touching upon many areas of our work: legal predictions, negotiation support, democratization of technology, and improving access to justice,” says Professor Samuel Dahan, Director of the Conflict Analytics Lab.

Dahan has partnered with Professor Yuri Levin, the Stephen J.R. Smith Chair of Analytics and Executive Director of Analytics and AI with Smith School of Business; Professor Xiaodan Zhu of Queen’s Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Professor Maxime Cohen of McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management. Also assisting with the project are up to 15 students earning such degrees as Master of Laws, Master of Business Administration and Master of Management in Artificial Intelligence.

There are three components to the dispute resolution program – a legal component, a computer science component, and a data science component. The user inputs the relevant data into the system, and it returns a relevant suggestion. The system also learns as it works, meaning its suggestions will only improve with time and use.

The employment notice (“severance”) predictor, which the team has been working on the longest, is intended to help employees in situations where they have been terminated. By typing in their variables including industry, region, age of employee and length of employment, the system can suggest an appropriate severance amount. This means the terminated employee can use this system – without hiring an employment lawyer – to understand if they are being compensated fairly if they are let go by their employer.

While the system is beginning with employment law, Dahan sees the potential for application in small claims, family law,insurance, trademark disputes, and beyond. The only stipulations are that it must be a monetary award, and the award amount must be under $50,000.

“We are hoping to launch our first pilot project this fall – the employment notice predictor – and through a practicum course we are continuing to develop our data sets and explore new legal questions that could benefit from the application of AI,” says Dahan. “Over the next two years, we will be working with the Ontario Attorney General and the British Columbia Small Claims Tribunal to integrate this technology into their system.The idea will be to integrate the various tools, including the legal predictions, the dispute resolution, and the negotiation tool, into existing judicial procedures.”

In the future, Dahan hopes not only that people will use this tool but he hopes to hear from users who receive positive settlements and from companies who successfully integrate the platform into their online dispute resolution processes.

As Dahan puts it, “If they say, ‘you've helped us to sort out half of our customer service cases by making offers to unhappy customers, and our employees are much less overwhelmed than they used to be,’ I would call that a success.”

This article was first published on the Queen's Faculty of Law website.

In this piece for the Together We Are blog, Lauren Winkler, a Kanien’keha:ka student at Queen’s, talks about her journey relearning to love herself in the different roles of her life: daughter, sister, niece, grandchild, and friend.

“Education is what got us here, education is what will get us out.” – Senator Murray Sinclair

When I think of university, or post-secondary education, or life for that matter, one word comes to mind: opportunity. Coming to Queen’s I was excited about the opportunity to live on my own, to make new friends, to find myself (because at the time I thought that was something that would just happen… I only wish), and to learn. Sure enough, I have thrived living in my independence, made lifelong friends, and gained a better sense of who I am. What I did not anticipate were the challenges to my own way of thinking that would come from my professors and peers, the different perspectives and life experiences that would be shared with me, and how strengthening my values would shift how I learned and perceived the world. Before university, I always saw learning as linear, but I now understand it to be a lifelong process in which I will learn, unlearn, and relearn. I believe that the more you learn, the better equipped you are to practice empathy, engage in meaningful discussion, and be a catalyst for change.

It was during my undergraduate degree that I first heard the term “unlearning” and it was not until this past summer that I truly understood the concept of “relearning.”

Usually when I tell my story, it heavily focuses on my identity as an Indigenous student. Today, however, I want to embrace my vulnerability and share a different narrative. I want to tell you about how I am relearning to love myself. To love myself as a daughter, sister, niece, grandchild, and friend. To love myself as a woman, as a Mohawk woman, a student, as a law student. To love myself as an advocate for Indigenous peoples, as a student to my culture, as a member of the Onkwehon:we community. To do this, I have had to unlearn toxic pressures and expectations that I put on myself, unlearn my view of vulnerability as being negative, and unlearn stigmas attached to mental health and mental illness. In the past year, I have learned that eating disorders are not solely a result of body image, I have learned that healing is not linear, and I have learned that sharing my own story helps others to validate their own. Struggling with depression, anxiety, and disordered eating, I have had to relearn patience with myself, relearn to validate my thoughts and feelings, and relearn loving myself for who I am.

You will have noticed that at the beginning of this post I included a quote by Senator Murray Sinclair. Where his quote is referring to the residential school system and the power that education has in the process of reconciliation, I think that his message on education can be applied to any situation. I truly believe that we all have so much to learn from one another and that we would all be in a better place if we genuinely listened to and engaged with one another. If we unlearned narratives that we have been taught about one another. If we relearn how to connect with one another to work towards a larger purpose. To me, that is the power of learning, unlearning, and relearning – they are processes that I will be humbly engaging in my whole life and the thought excites me.

As Together We Are marks its fifth year, the blog will focus on unlearning and relearning. The contributors will talk about the learnt attitudes, behaviours, and feelings that must be changed in order to foster a truly inclusive campus.

“The road we travel is equal in importance to the destination we seek. There are no shortcuts. When it comes to truth and reconciliation we are forced to go the distance.”

These are the words of Senator Murray Sinclair, expressed during his 2009-2015 tenure as Chief Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. These words are also one of the first things people will see when they enter the Queen’s Faculty of Law building, thanks to Law’18.

For their graduating class gift to the school, Law’18 classmates funded the design, production, and installation of the quote in silver lettering on the east wall of the building’s front entrance. 

“Exhibiting the words of Justice Murray Sinclair in the atrium will provide a daily reminder to law students that the journey of reconciliation is far from over, and that they have an important role to play in maintaining its momentum,” says Katrina Crocker, Law’18 Class President. “Additionally, the plaque – located inside a building branded with the name of Canada's first prime minister – will help to achieve a greater balance in that relationship.”

Crocker and the other seven Law’18 council members had put out an open call for classmates to submit ideas for a gift that would allow their graduating class to leave behind something meaningful to the Queen’s Law community.

“After reviewing a handful of proposals, the eight student council members selected the Sinclair quote submission in the interest of advancing reconciliation with Indigenous populations and generating a deeper awareness of the harms for which we are brought to reconcile,” Crocker says. “This short but powerful quote will speak to everyone who reads it and it honours Murray Sinclair’s work with the truth and reconciliation process.”

Sinclair, who served the justice system in Manitoba for over 25 years, was the first Indigenous judge appointed in that province and the second in Canada. He was appointed to the Senate in 2016. 

Law’18 raised a total of $6,900, mainly through social events over their three years in law school. They anticipate they’ll be contributing leftover funds from their class gift campaign to another important cause, the Law ThankQ Fund Bursary.  

Watch how the Sinclair quote was installed in the Queen’s Law atrium.

This latest piece adds to the reconciliation efforts at the Faculty of Law.

On Sept. 28, 2018, a permanent art installation in the Gowling WLG Atrium, paying tribute to Indigenous Peoples.

The piece – Words That Are Lasting – was created by Hannah Claus, a visual artist of English and Kanien'kehÁ:ka / Mohawk ancestries and a member of the Tyendinaga Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, and features the recreations of seven wampum belts suspended from the Gowling WLG Atrium ceiling. 

This article was originally published on the Queen's Faculty of Law website.