September 11, 2024
Natalija Popovic feels right at home in front of a law school classroom.
After decades in the field of litigation, she says it wasn’t a huge leap for her to join the faculty of Osgoode’s Professional LLM in Canadian Common Law. And over the last nine years, Popovic has noticed parallels between her teaching role and litigation.
“It’s a different context, but it absolutely translates,” Popovic says. “In both cases, you’re on your feet, conveying information, dealing with questions from your audience, and considering issues on the fly.”
“That’s the type of work that suits me,” she adds. And it shows: Popovic is the 2024 winner of Osgoode’s Professional LLM Teaching Award.
At university, Popovic took time before settling on a career path. After considering journalism, she decided that law school would be a better fit, but quickly struck both criminal law and family law from her list of possibilities after struggling with the emotional burden associated with those practice areas.
“I found them very interesting as areas of law, but I didn’t have the internal constitution for the reality of the underlying events and the effects on people’s lives,” Popovic explains.
Settling on litigation, “I found that I was very comfortable on my feet, advocating and making submissions,” says Popovic, who has hardly looked back since.
After working in commercial litigation at a downtown Toronto law firm, Popovic moved to an in-house role overseas, before transitioning to administrative law in-house in the areas of professional discipline and securities regulation.
Popovic had not been at the bar long before she made her first foray into the classroom, as an instructor in the Law Society of Ontario’s then-Bar Admission Course and subsequently teaching at another law school. At Osgoode, she teaches Canadian Professional Responsibility, one of the core courses in the Canadian Common Law LLM program.
Popovic and her students examine the legal and ethical responsibilities of lawyers and various aspects of the nature and organization of the legal profession in Canada. The course is also designed to meet the requirements of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s National Committee on Accreditation, as such it is a required course for internationally trained lawyers seeking to requalify in Canada.
“The students are wonderful and I learn so much from them,” Popovic says. “Many have already trained and practised law in other countries where the rules of professional conduct are at times somewhat different, so they bring their own perspectives to the issues and concepts to our discussions, which is valuable for everyone in the class.”
Anyone who takes Popovic’s class will find her treatment of the course material sprinkled with a healthy dose of humour.
“We are certainly going to take the practice of law very seriously, but I’m not going to take myself too seriously,” she says.
In addition, Popovic takes every opportunity she can to bring legal concepts to life, by incorporating real-world examples and topical issues into her classroom.
“We have caselaw and a model code of conduct that we have to understand, but I try to look beyond the four corners of our syllabus and bring in more current caselaw into our discussions,” she says. “I want to help my class see that even though they are students of law at present, the issues that they will be facing as lawyers are happening right now, outside the doors of our classroom in the real world.”
As someone who pays close attention to her feedback, Popovic was particularly gratified to receive this year’s Professional LLM Teaching Award.
“I read all students’ comments and I have been thrilled and humbled by the reaction,” she says. “I’m happy to be affiliated with the work of my students. I see so many of them going on to further studies, making their way in the legal profession, and succeeding in their legal careers. It’s very rewarding to feel that I contributed in some part to that.”
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Natalija Popovic is an Administrative Tribunal panel member for the City of Toronto and an instructor in the Professional LLM in Canadian Common Law.