Vanessa is a lawyer who has had the privilege of practicing in both Australia and Canada. She moved to Australia in pursuit of her dream to practice law and completed law school there before working in Australia for almost two years. She moved back to Canada in 2022, requalified as a lawyer, and now practices family law in Edmonton. She was an AP English student at FFCA from 2014-2016. 

My journey began in grade 2, when I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. Before that, I wanted to be a princess or a fashion designer. To my dismay, I realized one of those options would be incredibly difficult to achieve, and I lost interest in the other. So, I set my mind on what I thought I did best: arguing for a living.

My journey began in grade 2, when I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. Before that, I wanted to be a princess or a fashion designer. To my dismay, I realized one of those options would be incredibly difficult to achieve, and I lost interest in the other. So, I set my mind on what I thought I did best: arguing for a living.

As I got older, I never wavered from wanting to become a lawyer. However, my reasons changed. I found myself becoming engrossed with the concept of justice and realized this was something I was truly passionate about. 

I don’t quite remember what sparked my interest in justice. Maybe it was in my grade 5 classroom, when we were reading The Last Safe House: A Story of the Underground Railroad, or when I learned of Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream Speech. Perhaps, it was in grade 8 when I truly began to understand the horror of ongoing human rights violations around the world, or when I began to read books like The Kite Runner or To Kill A Mockingbird. Regardless, one thing was clear to my younger self: justice was black and white – there could be no grey area.

And I could not have been more wrong. 

In 2016, after graduating from high school, I picked up my life and moved to Australia to go to law school, in pursuit of my dreams. I completed a double degree with a Bachelor of International Relations and a Bachelor of Laws in 2020. Throughout my time in law school, I volunteered at an immigration law clinic, served as president of the Bond University United Nations Student Association, and attended various Model United Nations competitions – one of which occurred in Japan. I also worked as a law clerk at a law firm in the final year of my degrees. 

My passion throughout law school continued to be human rights, especially through the lens of international relations. My goal was to work for the United Nations or become a human rights lawyer. But everything changed when I started working in law, and serendipitously fell into family law. I realized that was one of my passions too.

I vividly remember when my perspective on justice started to shift. 

Sure, justice could be black and white – but what about the grey?

There were two defining moments in which my perspective began to shift: one came after watching a TED talk about being a criminal defence lawyer, and the other moment was listening to an international criminal defence lawyer speak in my international criminal law course. 

It is a common misconception that criminal prosecutors represent the “side of justice,” while criminal defence lawyers represent criminals, or wrongdoers. It is much more nuanced than that. Justice has two sides – that is why justice is often symbolized as a scale. 

I began to understand that criminal defence is, in fact, justice. Criminal defence works to protect the legal rights of an accused, while shining a light on their humanity, ensuring fairness. Yes, someone may have committed a crime. But what led them there? What did they experience in their life that shaped their current actions? Were they children of residential school survivors who faced an immeasurable amount of generational trauma? Were they abused as children? The list of questions goes on. Ultimately, this helped me realize that justice is far from black and white. 

Fast forward to the beginning of my career in law. I started working at a firm in Gold Coast, Australia, once I was admitted as a solicitor in the state of Queensland. There, I gained experience in everything from civil litigation to domestic violence law. I moved on to a firm in Brisbane, where I practiced solely family and domestic violence law. Eventually, when I moved back to Canada, I began articling at a firm where I practiced both family and criminal law. Time and time again, I was faced with the reality of the grey area – and I began to understand that justice lives and operates there. 

I now work at a law firm in Edmonton, practicing family law. I represent a wide variety of clients from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. I represent parents, spouses who are divorcing, couples who are about to get married, guardians, and sometimes grandparents who want to formalize their ability to contact and see their grandchildren. 

Almost all of my work lies in the grey area. 

I like to tell my clients that a settlement is not always about winning or getting 100% of what you want. It is about accepting what you can live with. 

In family law, justice is not always a clean-cut solution. Justice is often complex, and it is sometimes expressed through a level of compromise or meeting in the middle. It is holistic and takes into account several different versions of the truth. Because justice, ultimately, sees humanity. 

So, the grey area between black and white is not necessarily unclear, as it is often portrayed. In my opinion, the grey area between black and white represents humanity. To live in the grey is simply to be human – and I am grateful that I get to represent different facets of that grey area, every day.

I hope to continue working as a family lawyer for many years to come. My advice is to continue challenging your way of thinking. Listen to different perspectives from your own. I promise that you will likely be surprised by what you learn and how that might shape your career path.