If you went to university in the 1990s and miss those endless dorm-room debates about political correctness, then you will love the latest controversy over Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, a Bay Street law firm long known by young lawyers as “Slavies” for the way it is said to work its students and associates.
In its own attempt to perhaps reclaim a negative nickname, the firm has taken to embracing it in a series of ads it ran in student-run publications at Osgoode Hall and the University of Toronto’s law school. The ads playfully suggest the name is only “half true.”
The ads, meant to attract students to the firm, have been running since the fall. But they have recently attracted some flak from indignant law students who accuse the firm of making light of slavery. The firm has apologized.
You can read more about it, if you must, at the website of the lawyerly lifestyle magazine Precedent.
Even the American legal blog Above The Law has taken notice.
