On Thursday November 24, between 12:00-1:30pm, FACL ON’s Women’s Committee and Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP will be hosting the first in a two-part series on planning new parenthood and the re-entry into the workforce. The goal of this series is to bring to light and discuss some of the challenges, success stories, and opportunities for further improvement of the legal profession’s practices and culture to make balancing new parenthood and work easier for all parents. 

The first session is focused on having an interactive and open conversation about these issues and is your opportunity to have your voice heard in a supportive environment. We will kick off with a panel of speakers, and after a brief Q&A, break-out into smaller discussion groups which will be moderated.  The break-out groups will allow participants to speak in an intimate and safe space about questions, concerns, and challenges they have about becoming new parents and returning to work. The information from the break-out groups will be summarized and anonymized. We will also share survey questions with participants to voluntarily complete entirely privately, after the first session. 

At the second session, FACL and Cassels will present the data that we gathered from the first session and intervening survey questions to another subset of the legal community – human resources, legal community decision-makers, and partner-level professionals.  The second session is planned for January 2023.  More information to come. 

This series is aimed at fostering support for racialized men, women, and all genders, who are planning to leave and return to work to build their families, as the entire spectrum of gender orientations and identities face these challenges. 

This two-part series will be hosted in-person at the Cassels office in downtown Toronto, and offer a hybrid virtual option for those unavailable to attend in person. The in-person portion will be catered. The virtual option will allow participants to watch the panel presentations, join the short Q&A and attend the break-out sessions virtually as well.