Students Give Business Law Summit an 'A'
By Bianca Miller, Ina Qirkollari, Justin Ongaro, and Ryan Smitheram (Mississauga Business News - November 2008)
These four students at Port Credit Secondary school were invited by Pallett Valo LLP to observe this year's Business Law Summit at the Grand Banquet Hall. They were then given some homework: to discuss what they had seen that day. This is their special report to the Business Times.
The 2008 Business Law Summit, now in its third year, had several new twists in 2008. About 100 people attended this year’s Summit, held at the Mississauga Grand Banquet Hall on Thursday, September 25.
First, the Summit opened with a panel discussion of economists and one stockbroker, which was moderated by this newspaper’s own Rick Drennan. Mr. Drennan facilitated a lively debate among economists Dawn Desjardins from RBC, Pascal Gauthier from TD Bank, Stewart Hall from HSBC, and stockbroker Fred Ketchen from Scotia Capital.
Second, the sponsors invited the four of us—senior students from Port Credit Secondary School in Mississauga, each with an interest in business, economics or law—to attend this year’s Summit. The reasoning was a bit tongue-in-cheek: the sponsors figured that each of the panelists had enough crystal plaques and pen-and-pencil sets. Hey, we were speaker gifts—sort of.
“We extended these four invitations to Port Credit students in lieu of giving speaker gifts to our four panelists,” said Anna Esposito, managing partner of founding Business Law Summit sponsor Pallett Valo LLP.
“We believe strongly in stewardship, in giving back to the community in which our law firm operates. And we believe that mentoring the next generation of Canada’s business leaders is important,” said Ms. Esposito.
Following the opening panel discussion, a number of lawyers from Pallett Valo, Connon & Iacobelli, and DeRusha Law Firm began 15-minute presentations (they all stuck to the time limit!) on a variety of topics.
Bobby Sachdeva and John Russo spoke about bankruptcy and insolvency law, to help businesses avoid bankruptcy or major losses. Pallett Valo’s Murray Gottheil gave a presentation titled “Lessons from the '90s” on how to survive the next recession. Haig DeRusha from DeRusha Law Firm stressed the importance of knowing how to appropriately handle a confrontation with the police. We also learned more about technology law from Karen Groulx, leasing law from Murray Box, labour & employment law from Pamela Yudcovitch, family law from Jane Connon and, last but not least, tax law from Bryan McNulty.
It was a very eventful and informative day. Although we could not quite grasp everything, we still learned a lot and came away better business people. It was a great experience for all of us and we all walked away having learned something new.
As students in the Port Credit community, we want to encourage local businesses to include students whenever possible. You never know—we could be the billionaires of the future!
It was an important experience for all of us, especially at this time when we are deciding what to do with the rest of our lives. We are very thankful for this experience. It helped to affirm, or at least tweak, some of our goals, and provided us with some simple, influential life-long lessons.
This experience was very beneficial. It helped us to get our feet wet and learn about what it takes to be a successful business person. We would like to thank Fred Ketchen—a long-time friend of our school—Pallett Valo, and the other organizers for this amazing experience.