The BLG Research Fellowships
Borden Ladner Gervais LLP is pleased to announce a $1.2 million, five-year extension of its innovative Research Fellowship Program. (For full details of the renewal announcement, see Canadian legal research gets $1.2 million boost from Borden Ladner Gervais LLP). BLG's ongoing financial support for law students and their schools demonstrates our dedication to excellence in the legal profession. The BLG Research Fellowship program, now valued at more than $2 million over a decade, is one of the largest donations for research at Canadian law schools.
Every summer from 2009 through 2013, 20 students from across Canada who have completed their first-year studies at 14 of Canada's leading law schools will each receive a $12,000 fellowship to assist a faculty member in a leading-edge approved research project. The law schools select both the students and the projects that will benefit from the BLG funding . The law schools select the projects; BLG provides the funding for the student researcher.
The program has won praise from legal educators across the country:
“BLG's innovative program is one of the most forward-looking and influential sources of support that students and professors have for legal education in Canada.”
Nicholas Kasirer, Dean, Faculty of Law, McGill University
“There are not many opportunities like this for first-year students. It also benefits the faculty considerably by providing full-time research assistance from two of our top students for the summer.”
Mary Anne Bobinski, Dean, University of British Columbia Law School
“The BLG Fellowship program has permitted faculty members to produce high-quality work in a shorter period of time than would otherwise be the case, and to undertake some projects that might otherwise be difficult or even impossible to fund.”
Richard Devlin, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, Dalhousie University
(See Law Schools Evaluate the BLG Research Fellowship Program for further comments.)
Several BLG Research Fellowships have led to published work, and one BLG-sponsored paper, “ Scholastic Jurisprudence and Formal Irrationality,” by McGill's Helge Dedek, has been selected for presentation at the 2008 inaugural Harvard-Stanford International Junior Faculty Forum. “The competition for invitations for this prestigious conference is very intense,” says McGill Dean Kasirer.
Adds Dean Kasirer: “This program has made all the difference to legal research here, and I am most grateful to BLG for their support.”
BLG launched the Research Fellowship program in 2004 for several reasons . Through the stipends fellowships , promising students benefit from opportunities to do meaningful research. At the same time, the program strengthens university-based research at Canadian law schools—it is part of our firm's ongoing commitment to give back to the community, in this case the legal community.
But the initiative also fits into our overall pursuit of excellence. Explains Norm Letalik, BLG's Managing Director of Professional Excellence: “ We considered a range of options to support professional excellence in the legal profession and These fellowships seek to cultivate values of excellence and professionalism that are core to the expertise and service we bring to our clients. We considered a range of options to strengthen our relations with law schools and to support professional excellence in the legal profession.
“ We concluded that these fellowships would demonstrate our commitment to excellence while reflecting our national character. They seek to cultivate values of excellence and professionalism that are core to the expertise and service we bring to our clients. It was the right thing to do. ”
The 14 participating law schools are:
- University of Victoria
- University of British Columbia
- University of Calgary
- University of Alberta
- University of Saskatchewan
- University of Windsor
- University of Western Ontario
- York University (Osgoode Hall)
- University of Toronto
- Queen's University
- University of Ottawa
- Université de Montréal
- McGill University
- Dalhousie University
Click below Fellowship recipients, Professors and project details.
