Baker & McKenzie LLP next week hosts an evening of "cocktails and conversation" with several prominent women business leaders who will discuss their journey to the top of the corporate ladder.

The event, "Getting to the Top," will feature a panel discussion with Dona Eull-Schultz, president and portfolio manager with Leon Frazer & Associates; Dianne Lister, president and executive director, ROM Governors, and Elizabeth Mill, president and CEO of Workplace Safety & Prevention Services.

The panelists will "discuss their experiences, challenges and rewards in their journey to the C-Suite, both from a professional and personal standpoint," Baker & McKenzie said in a news release.

The event is next Wednesday, Feb. 1 at Baker & McKenzie's head office. For more information you can This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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Women's Law Association of Ontario is running a pair of professional development seminars for lawyers looking to start their own law firms or seeking to "refresh their brand for the current marketplace."

The first session, on Feb. 21, is entitled: "Impactful Business Development: How to Capture, Communicate and Build Your Professional Brand and Hanging out Your Shingle: How to Start your Own Law Firm." (This seminar was originally scheduled for Jan. 17)

The second session, on April 16, is on practice management and "the important aspects of resource development."

The events will be at the Ontario Bar Association Conference Centre. To register, visit the WLAO site. 

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Law students are in a tizzy over a controversial advertisement from Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP that attempts to make light of the politically incorrect moniker law students and associates use informally for the firm: "Slavies."

The firm has received a reputation for working its students and associates to the bone.

The ad — which crosses out the "D" of Davies and replaces it with a graffiti-like "SL," so that "Davies" becomes "Slavies" — has been running since September 2011 in Osgoode Hall's Obiter Dicta and U of T Faculty of Law's Ultra Vires, both student-run newspapers.

A flurry of letters to the editor from offended students ran in the Jan. 12-16 issue of Obiter Dicta, as did a letter of apology from Frances Mahil, the director of student affairs at Davies.

"That Davies saw fit to run an ad invoking the shameful, genocidal, dehumanizing practice of forced, unpaid, lifelong labour and suffering that was essential to the power the Western world now enjoys is despicable," Osgoode law student Kisha Munroe declared in her letter.

Davies' letter of apology attempted to explain the firm's thought process on running the ad: "The intent of the advertisement was instead to try to suggest that the nickname students have used for our firm for many, many years should not dissuade students from considering applying to us for summer or articling positions."

It continued: "We were aiming for some self-deprecating humour. It did not occur to our team that we would be seen as making light of slavery, rather than simply poking fun at ourselves. Obviously it should have."

Davies has decided to stop running the advertisement.

Canadian law school blog Law is Cool shares its view of the story here (accompanied by an onslaught of comments).

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Time for the weather-worn and much maligned New Year's resolution. January is an opportune time to stop and take inventory. This year, my resolution is to meditate regularly. I invite all of you lawyers to do the same. No, I did not join a cult or turn 40. It just makes sense.

Why should you let some arbitrary date on the calendar dictate the timing of critical decisions about your well-being? Because you’ve had an opportunity to spend two glorious nearly uninterrupted weeks with your loved ones, which served as a palpable reminder of what’s important — all things considered — and you also consumed industrial quantities of food and yuletide cheer (booze) during that time and no longer fit into last year’s pants...

Meditation must have been invented for lawyers. Lawyers work long hours at stressful jobs, are often out of shape, are prone to depression and substance abuse, and have high rates of suicide and divorce. Happy new year!  Many of us lawyers are too mired in the drudgery of our daily routine or too fixated on the objects of our own single-minded ambition to stop and ask ourselves: Who and where am I now? What is important to me? Ain’t nobody needs meditation more than lawyers do! Firms should make it part of mandatory training.

After the jump: Meditation keeps you in touch with your feelings and can bring peace to the most insane day

Today's top legal news headlines:

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Today's top legal news headlines:

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• Police accuser denies his injuries were minimal (Toronto Star)
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