I've been writing of my experience in attending the most recent CBA National Immigration Law Conference in Vancouver this last spring; I got the opportunity to chat with a few lawyers and I found those discussions inspiring. Despite the different paths that we all took in the process of becoming immigration advocates, the same themes kept popping up. The desire to assist others; the early exposure to injustice and an appreciation of the obstacles that newcomers face; the rewards of guiding someone through a difficult, labyrinthine process.
All of the lawyers were asked the same basic questions; to introduce themselves, how they came to the practice of immigration law, what they find most rewarding and finally what advice they would give to their younger selves or to lawyers just starting out. Here, I caught up with Sam Plett, a lawyer with Desloges Law Group, and clearly a rising star in the immigration bar.
Sam Plett: ...my name is Sam Plett and I'm a lawyer at Desloges Law Group on Toronto. We practice exclusively in immigration and refugee law. I do primarily litigation, so IRB litigation, federal court litigation, and then PRRAs ... H&C's ... and those types of applications.
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Sam Plett: ... going into Law School I really didn't know anything about immigration law. I was first exposed to immigration law through first year administrative law, which sounded horrifically boring. We read a lot of immigration cases and I started to really enjoy the concepts. Going into Law School. I was really interested in international human rights law. I saw myself maybe working at a UN Tribunal. As I started to learn more about it, I realized it was a way to practice human rights law here in Canada, because a lot of those issues really relate to immigration and refugee law, so I guess I sort of happened into immigration law in Law School, but I started volunteering with my current Principal, Chantal Desloges, and I've been there ever since.
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Sam Plett: I think the one case that comes to mind where I experienced probably both, memorable lows and memorable highs, is ... it's a litigation where we're challenging the constitutionality of the PRRA Bar, but in that case as part of the litigation, we initially lost the motion to stay removal, and our client was deported, which was a really hard defeat, and it was difficult to manage. Subsequently, now we've been granted leave by the federal court. Now, we're taking it up to the Court of Appeals, although we don't know what the outcome is, yet. It started out low and now it seems to be moving forward. It was a real learning experience in dealing with the losses that inevitably happen in this practice. But, also showing that if you continue to persevere through that, that you can still serve your clients, even in the face of those lows.
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Sam Plett: I think the most important thing is really just to find, first of all, who you are and to practice the type of law that fits your personality. It seems that most lawyers coming in, or even students coming into Law School think that, "Oh, I want to end up in court doing litigation," but that might not be what your personality is suited for. Really, finding who you are and what your passion is, and fitting your career to that as opposed to doing it the other way around, not just going into something because you think it's what you should be doing, but doing something because it's what you're passionate about. That will serve you well because in every area of law, but particularly immigration, you will have those lows. You will have those times when you don't get the outcome that you want. What's going to carry you through is that knowledge that what you're doing is important and you're passionate about it.
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