Name: David Younan    

Position: Partner     

Field: Law

What is your Educational Background? (i.e. Degree, Diploma, Certificate, etc.)?

Bachelor of Administrative Studies
Accounting Degree
Bachelor of Laws
Notary Public
Commissioner of Oaths

Are there any Special Certifications/Licenses Required?  If so, please describe them

In order to practice law in Ontario, a law school graduate must successfully complete the Bar Admissions Course through the Law Society of Upper Canada, which entails articling with a law firm for one year and then writing and passing various tests given in the various fields of law.  

What are the Day-to-Day Responsibilities in your Position?

In broad terms, lawyers apply their interpretation of the law (the codified rules of their society) to advise their employer or client on completing transactions in compliance with the law or resolving disputes based on current understanding of the law.
Most of what lawyers do is paperwork. They research legal precedents, spending hours or months in law libraries or with online databases. They prepare contracts, briefs, and other documents, assembling boilerplate paragraphs or writing text from scratch. They plan and conduct examinations, which in complicated cases can generate thousands of pages of testimony, all of which has to be read, analyzed, and refined into usable information. Sometimes, especially if they are litigation specialists, lawyers actually argue cases before judges or juries.

What is the Work Environment for an Entry Level Position? (i.e. Clientele type, Working Space, etc.)

This will vary in the type and size of firm, where a junior lawyer may specialize in a particular are of law (ie. Bankruptcy law, of Banking law) or a more broad area within a field (ie. Corporate law) or act as a general practitioner (may deal with various areas of law).  Some lawyers deal directly with clients, while others work for other lawyers and rarely see clients.  Some lawyers are self sufficient, while others have assistants (again depending on the firm and type of law).

 What is the Highest Position you can reach in this Field and Describe its Work Environment?

The limits are boundless; to some, becoming a judge is the ultimate goal, to others, becoming a partner of a large law firm or opening their own private practice is the highest level, while to other becoming a professor, a CEO of a corporation, or Prime Minister (where all but one Prime Ministers have a degree in law) is the ultimate level.

What is the Most Valuable Thing you have learned in your Career?

Law is not static; it changes and evolves over time in correlation to social changes in society.  Law teaches the lawyer how to think both logically and strategically.  In turn, a lawyer usually has a greater awareness of his/her surrounding, ethically, morally and socially, which broadens the persons perspective on the various facets of society.