About

The award winning in-house legal team at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is led by Leola Pon, executive officer – legal, and consists of 11 lawyers and legal staff who work closely with the executive team on strategic issues. The team also consists of a senior litigation counsel who handles most of the company’s civil litigation matters, and five legal counsel who practice in education and human rights law with specialties in criminal law, corporate, commercial, cyber, IT and privacy, construction and child welfare. The team has grown in recent years focusing on strengthening its litigation bench, hiring specialist lawyers, investing in legal services technology and meeting its equity and anti-oppression strategy. The team created an intranet website for TDSB staff with a number of resources including a recently launched a novel “Adopt-a-Lawyer program”. This program provides opportunities for the company’s lawyers to “ride-along” with participating superintendents of education as they visit their schools. Lawyers get first-hand experience in the schools to gain a better understanding of the issues facing school staff and students, and to develop their working relationship with internal clients. In the last two years the team has reacted to Bill 5 Legislation acting as counsel for TDSB who intervened in litigation relating to the constitutionality of the reduction of City of Toronto council seats during the 2018 municipal election. It has also acted as counsel for TDSB in the judicial review of an Education Act regulation, which has effectively prevented the TDSB from collecting EDCs. Pon identifies that the team is, ‘strategic, committed and collaborative with a focus on equity, accountability and excellence. As most of the team are new to the TDSB, they have brought new energy, skills, and ideas to the table. The TDSB in-house legal team practices law in an extremely complex and challenging environment, which makes the work we do so interesting and rewarding’.