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2024 TLA EMERGING EXCELLENCE AWARD RECIPIENT JESSICA BRANT |
2024 TLA The 2024 Emerging Excellence Award Recipient - Jessica Brant
Jessica Brant is to receive the Toronto Lawyers’ Association Emerging Excellence Award on February 29, 2024, at Ricarda’s in Toronto.
The TLA Emerging Excellence Award is presented to a Toronto lawyer in practice for 10 years or less or Toronto organization in existence for 10 years or less who/that exemplifies leadership or innovation in advancing the TLA’s three pillars of Knowledge, Advocacy and Community.
We are pleased to announce that Jessica Brant will be the recipient of this prestigious award for 2024.
The Award will be bestowed on her at the TLA’s Awards Gala to be held on February 29, 2024, at Ricarda’s at 134 Peter Street.
Jessica is an Indigenous family lawyer who practices in the Tyen-din-aga Mohawk Territory. Family law is an area of inherent personal and emotional conflict. More than almost any other practice area, clients seek counsel at one of the lowest points in their life, often with personal grudges simmering at or just below the surface.
How does Jessica approach the built in discord? As one of her nominees explained, Jessica follows the Creator’s Guidance: You shall only speak of the good in others.
For Jessica, this means centering her work with parents on the best interests of their children; using traditional practices like round tables to find creative solutions; and remembering the inherent humanity of clients enduring the trauma of separation.
Jessica’s legal journey has been more whirlwind than path. Weeks after completing her first year of law school at the University of Ottawa, Jessica gave birth to her first child, Ela. Three months later she was back in class with a nursing baby. Jessica’s daily routine was waking at 6:00 am to prep for the day, then a 2h city bus transit to (and from) school, attend class with Ela, manage home life and studying between midnight and 4:00 am. Jessica also commuted to Toronto where she worked weekends at Benmor Family Law Group.
With enormous resilience, Jessica completed her JD and was called to the bar in 2016. She completed Queen’s University’s Mohawk Cultural and Language Diploma in 2020. From 2018 to 2021 Jessica ran her own practice, Brant Law Office, in Napanee, Ontario before returning to Toronto to continue her family law practice at Benmor Family Law Group.
“Jessica Brant inspires us with her commitment to her family and practice, her courage and determination to bring equality and opportunity to all people with legal challenges before them,” said Aitan Lerner, President, TLA.
Jessica remains humble and visible in the community as a strong, healthy Kanyen’kéha woman. She is a positive female role-model and mentor in our community because of her Indigenous inspired work-ethic, the practice of ka’nikonhrí:yo (keeping a healthy, good mind), her embodiment of ka’shatsténshera (the strength to act right, and accordingly by oneself and for the greater good) and hard work towards the maintenance, preservation and advocacy of skénnen (peace).
Perhaps Jessica’s most outstanding accomplishment is raising her three children, Ela, Summer-Sage and Brant, on the land with Mohawk language and traditions. Brant, Jessica’s youngest, is autistic, has a seizure disorder, developmental delay and a heart condition, requiring endless therapies and specialists. Jessica sees these challenges as an opportunity to learn and grow, much like her view on intergenerational trauma of residential “schools” and de-colonizing the legal field.