Joel Watson returns to Shibley Righton LLP from Veterans Affairs

Joel Watson returns to Shibley Righton LLP from Veterans Affairs

November 11, 2015

Joel Watson is back in the trenches at Shibley Righton LLP after an eight-month leave of absence supervising legal matters for the Minister of Veterans Affairs.

Watson, who had just re-joined Shibley Righton after the collapse of Heenan Blaikie in January 2014, was called to Ottawa in January 2015 by then-minister Erin O’Toole, to sort out the significant legal issues plaguing the embattled department after several high-profile court losses. 

Inserting outside litigation counsel into the Department of Justice hierarchy during constitutional class actions was an unprecedented but mission-driven step, given the seriousness of the situation and Watson’s credentials. 

In addition to his litigation and negotiation expertise, Watson is a former Army officer and former vice-chair of the Veterans Transition Advisory Council, and brought both Bay Street acumen and veteran credibility to the table at a critical juncture. 

It also helped that, before his legal career, Watson had been a Regimental Officer of the new Deputy Minister General Walt Natynczyk, former Chief of Defence Staff.

He tells AdvocateDaily.com their relationship of trust allowed him to cross the invisible, but very real, glass partition between ministers’ offices and the bureaucracy.

During his tenure, which he says was deliberately downplayed so as to be effective and non-political, he negotiated interim solutions in two high-profile, multi-million-dollar class actions, supervised all in-house legal matters and national litigation.

He also instituted new veteran-centric protocols for legal staff and, in yet another unusual move, put pen to paper in drafting the new legislation and regulations. His responsibilities were nation-wide and he says he saw a lot of Canada in those eight months.   

The election call brought the mission to an end as the bureaucracy went into caretaker mode for the duration and little more could be accomplished, he says.

After entrenching the gains, Watson returned to Shibley Righton to virtually a fresh start. Due to conflict-of-interest regulations, Watson had been required to cut all ties with the firm, after having just moved his practice, and hand over all of his clients to other partners during his leave — not a step for the faint of heart.

Fortunately, having leapt out of airplanes in his former life, Watson is not risk adverse and many of his long-time clients understood his need to serve both Canada and veterans.

Since his return, Watson has hit the ground running and picked up his counsel practice where he left off, with the added benefit of the experience of his recent tour of duty running a national legal department in the midst of contentious multi-million-dollar class actions. 

He says his biggest regret was "not having more time to get more done" and adds that he “misses not being on a plane every week."

He adds, “emails and letters are fine but too many lawyers default to false aggression behind email. If you really want to get things done for your client, you have to get out of your office and into the room with those who you are dealing with and get to a solution.”