Allison Cheron, LLM

We had the pleasure of speaking with Allison Cheron, Director of the Client Service Centre at the Law Society of Ontario, and alumni of the LLM in Labour and Employment Law program. Read about her professional journey and experiences in the LLM below: 

I went to law school without completing my undergraduate degree because I took a law course in my second year at York and knew I found my calling. I completed my LLB at Osgoode and articled at a large firm on Bay Street. I practised civil and criminal litigation in a small city for 8 years before joining the Law Society in 2000. I am currently the Director of the Client Service Centre, which includes five front line operational departments focusing on providing excellent customer service to both internal and external clients. I transitioned from practising law, to managing departments, to my current position leading a team of managers.

Why the LLM was a perfect fit 

I loved law school and continuous learning has been a focus of my career. I wanted to pursue an LLM right after law school but I had to be practical and start earning an income so I went into private practice. When my four children got old enough, I decided it was time to pursue my LLM and Osgoode was a natural choice. I had practised employment law before joining the Law Society and have always been very interested in Human Rights and Charter issues. A long career managing people and dealing with HR issues led me to decide that an LLM in Labour and Employment Law was the perfect fit for me and I was right.

Exposure to a world-class faculty and peers with multidisciplinary backgrounds 

Osgoode Professional Development made every effort to help us balance our responsibilities as a student with our work and personal lives. The LLM in Labour and Employment Law program has a stellar faculty with very talented and engaging people teaching the courses. Since the students in this specialty had many classes together, we had the opportunity to get to know each other well. It was a very diverse group of students with many different backgrounds, which made group work more interesting. It was very useful to have the perspectives of the students with Labour and Employment degrees or training, in addition to the lawyers. Some of the professors are from jurisdictions outside Ontario or even outside Canada, which gave us a very well rounded education about Labour and Employment Law. As someone in our class described it, we were taught by some of the “rock stars” of Labour and Employment Law. The program challenged me to think about legal issues in a broader context and I feel I gained new skills that have helped me grow in my career.