Juliette Vani
Lawyer
Juliette offers consultations to lawyers who are set to appear before the Court of Appeal of Quebec or the Supreme Court of Canada and want to adapt their approach accordingly. She also offers a service drafting motions, applications, and appellate factums.
Juliette has clerked at the Court of Appeal of Quebec in Montreal and at the Supreme Court of Canada for the then Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. Equipped with four years of experience as a clerk in Canada’s most senior courts, Juliette brings to her clients a capacity to see legal questions from the perspective of the bench and to identify the legal consequences that result from particular decisions. This allows her to advise her clients strategically about their situation and to maximise their chances of success.
Juliette’s experience has provided her with strong instincts regarding the arguments liable to convince judges, the strength of evidence, and the most compelling way of presenting it. She wrote her master’s thesis on the connections between the case constructed by the parties at trial and the decision-making process leading to the judgment. Her master’s thesis won the award of the Association of Law Professors of Quebec and the Themis award. Her thesis was published by Éditions Thémis in 2019 as Une histoire de vérités : perspectives narratives sur le procès criminel (translation: A Story of Truths: Narrative Perspectives on Criminal Trials). Juliette continued her research on the burden of proof and decision-making process at trial and in appeal during two years at the Law Faculty of Oxford University as a recipient of the prestigious Clarendon Scholarship.
Since the new Quebec Code of Civil Procedure in 2016, Juliette co-authors, alongside the Honourable André Rochon, legal commentaries on the articles related to the appellate process in Le Grand Collectif : Code de procédure civile, commentaires et annotations, Éditions Yvon Blais (translation: The Grand Collective: Code of Civil Procedure, Commentaries and Annotations). During the initial years of the new Code, their commentaries were referenced and discussed by the Court of Appeal of Quebec in more than 40 judgments that were pivotal to settling outstanding questions on the new appellate procedure. Each year, Juliette and Vincent Ranger (attorney specialized in civil appeals at the firm Per Curiam) personally analyze all new case law from the Court of Appeal on the appellate process to update Le Grand Collectif.
Juliette is a lecturer at the University of Sherbrooke Law Faculty on appellate procedures.
Before joining Power Law in February 2021, Juliette worked for a year in a well-known criminal defence law firm based in Montreal.
Juliette grew up in Quebec, in the Laurentians and Montreal. She has also lived in Ottawa, the United Kingdom, and France.
Juliette practices law in French and English. She is conversant in Spanish and is learning Italian.
Before joining Power Law, Juliette was researching the theory of evidence at the Faculty of Law of the University of Oxford. She was a recipient of the Oxford Clarendon scholarship, The Queen’s College Cyril and Phillis Long Scholarship, and the Canadian Joseph Armand Bombardier scholarship for graduate studies. During her studies in the United Kingdom, Juliette was an editor of the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, a volunteer for the Oxford Pro Bono Publico Group, and a member of the production team of a play written by Simone de Beauvoir.
Prior to joining the University of Oxford, Juliette worked for a year in a well-known criminal defence firm in Montreal. Her work focused on writing pleadings on questions of law that would arise during trial as well as Charter motions. She has also acted as a volunteer lawyer for The Innocence Project McGill.
Juliette started working at the Court of Appeal in Montreal as a student-at-law for Justice Rochon, as he then was, during her law degree. As a summer student, she performed research for Justice Rochon and Frédérique Le Colleter’s book: le Guide des requêtes devant le juge unique de la Cour d’appel, Éditions Yvon Blais, 2013 (translation: Guide to Applications Before the Court of Appeal Judge in Chambers).
Juliette then did her articling for the Quebec Bar at the Court of Appeal. She remained there for two years clerking for different judges. She also participated in mediation sessions in which she learned about alternative methods of dispute resolution. At that time, Juliette was a member of the Pro Bono Legal Services Committee of the Young Bar Association of Montreal. She contributed to the development of a new service to help self-represented litigants at the Court of Appeal in order to improve access to justice. After the Court of Appeal, Juliette conducted legal research assignments related to Justice Otis’ functions as the President of the Administrative Tribunal of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). She also assisted Justice Otis during a private commercial arbitration. Finally, Juliette completed her experience as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada as a specialist in Quebec civil law for Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.
Juliette graduated from her Master of Laws with the classification Exceptional for her thesis theorizing the criminal judicial process. The members of her thesis committee were the Professors Pierre-André Côté, Anne-Marie Boisvert, and Pierre Noreau. Juliette received the award of the Association of the Law Professors of Quebec for the best master’s thesis as well as the Thémis award. For her master’s degree, Juliette received the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research scholarship and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture scholarship. The Law Faculty of the Université de Montréal awarded her the Paul Lacoste scholarship for law and philosophy, the scholarship from the group Droit, changements et gouvernance, and the scholarship from the Centre de recherche en droit public.
Juliette received the Gold Medal of the 2012 graduating class in Law at the Université de Montréal. She also received the Professors’ award for the highest GPA as well as the Montreal Bar award for excellence in civil law. During her law degree, she received the Quebec Bar award for the highest average GPA amongst second-year students as well as the BCF and the Davis Ward Phillips & Vineberg awards for the highest average amongst first-year students. She also received the Wilson & Lafleur award for excellence in civil law.
Juliette started her law degree after obtaining a minor in criminology at the Faculty of Arts and Science of the Université de Montréal with the classification Exceptional.
Reference to the Quebec Court of Appeal regarding the decision of the Chief Justice of the Court of Quebec to reduce the number of days on which the judges assigned to the Criminal and Penal Division sit (intervention: constitutional principles of judicial independence and separation of powers)
Association canadienne-française de l’Alberta c Sa Majesté la Reine, 2022 ABKB 618 and 2022 ABKB 817 (motion to strike out: the constitutionality of underfunding post-secondary education in French under section 23 of the Charter and the constitutional principle of the protection of minority rights)
R v Bissonnette, 2022 CSC 23 (intervention : the constitutionality of the sentence of imprisonment without parole under section 12 of the Charter)
The Acadian Society of New Brunswick v The Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada et al, 2022 NBBR 85 (the constitutionality of the appointment of a unilingual Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick under the Charter)
Co-author with Me Vincent Ranger of the comments on the articles relating to appeal (articles 29 to 32; 351 to 390) in Le Grand Collectif : Code de procédure civile, commentaires et annotations, Éditions Yvon Blais, annual publication
Une histoire de vérités : perspectives narratives sur le procès criminel, Thémis Press, Montreal, 2019
Co-author with the Honourable André Rochon and Vincent Ranger of the legal commentaries on the articles related to the appellate process (articles 29 à 32; 351 à 390) in Le Grand Collectif : Code de procédure civile, commentaires et annotations, Thomson Reuters Press, yearly (2015-2021)
2015: conferences on the appellate procedure under the new Code of Civil Procedure with the Honourable André Rochon. The conferences were recognized by the Bar as contributing to the mandatory continuing legal education of the lawyers attending
Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Commerce and the Economy, “Bill S-215, An Act respecting measures in relation to the financial stability of post-secondary institutions”, October 4, 2022
Association des Avocats de la Défense de Montréal-Laval-Longueuil (AADM)
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