Ten Years of PBP Lawyers and Just Getting Started
Ten years ago, in October 2016, we opened the doors of what is now Perez Procope Leinveer LLP — known to our clients, colleagues, and community simply as PBP Lawyers. Our boutique Toronto firm was built on a blend of health law, estate advocacy, and civil rights provided by lawyers who show up fully for their clients, however complex or sensitive the matter. A decade later, that idea still drives everything we do. We’ve always described ourselves as small but mighty, and as we mark this milestone, we wanted to pause and celebrate a decade of client-centred advocacy — and, most of all, to thank the people who made it possible.
First and foremost: thank you to our clients. Over the past ten years you’ve trusted us with some of the hardest moments in your lives — Charter challenges, guardianship battles, estate conflicts, human rights claims, and more. That trust is the reason we exist.
Along the way, we’ve been proud to stand up for our clients and for the broader public interest in some genuinely significant cases. We represented the Mental Health Legal Committee as intervener at the Supreme Court of Canada in Ewert v. Canada, a win for the Charter rights of Indigenous prisoners, and later helped shape public interest standing law in Attorney General of British Columbia v. Council of Canadians with Disabilities. We also co-chaired the factum review committee for a joint intervention in Donovan v. Sherman Estate, the Supreme Court’s ruling on sealing orders respecting estates. Most recently, our ongoing work as amicus curiae in the Waterloo Region homeless encampment case has become one of the more closely watched Charter matters in the province, drawing coverage from national media. And that’s only a handful of the matters we’ve carried — from coroners’ inquests into the deaths of Soleiman Faqiri and Matthew Mahoney, to the Mass Casualty Commission in Nova Scotia, to Lisa’s recent appellate win in Ohenhen v. Klukach on treatment capacity and bodily autonomy.
Teaching the next generation of lawyers has been just as central to who we are. Mercedes and Kelley have co-taught Law and Psychiatry at Osgoode Hall Law School since 2012, and Alex has been a recurring guest instructor in Mental Health and the Law at the University of Windsor since 2016, and co-instructing since 2020. We’ve also directed and taught in Osgoode Professional Development’s Certificate in Elder Law program, designed and taught a gerontology course at Ryerson University, and returned again and again as faculty in various classrooms we’ve been invited to.
That same instinct to share what we know has carried into continuing legal education for the profession. Alex alone has spoken at more than 32 professional development programs over the past decade, co-chairing flagship programs like The Law Society’s Annotated Powers of Attorney and Ontario Bar Association’s Your Comprehensive Guide to Section 3 Counsel, and presenting at the LSO’s Estates and Trusts, Family Law, and Human Rights Summits. Mercedes has been a frequent presenter in her own right, including at the OBA’s Cultural Competency & Elder Law program and Osgoode’s Consent, Capacity & Substitute Decision Making conferences. Since joining the firm in 2025, Lisa has presented at Osgoode Professional Development’s certificate courses in Mental Health Law and Consent, Capacity & Substitute Decision Making, and OBA programs on capacity. We have regularly provide training to non-profits in mental health and capacity law.
We’ve tried to bring that same spirit to our community, too — from Kelley’s pro bono work with the Refugee Sponsorship Support Program, to speaking engagements with the Empowerment Council, the 519 Health Justice Program, and a Black Parent Support Group for parents of children with disabilities.
None of this means much without recognition from the people we respect most: our peers. We appreciate all of you who trusted us with your referrals over the years. We’re also grateful to have been named in Best Lawyers in Canada, the Lexpert Legal directory, and Chambers High Net Worth Guide, and for individual honours like Mercedes’s Mental Health Legal Committee’s 20th Anniversary Advocacy Award and Alex’s 2022 Hoffstein Book Prize.
Ten years means some change, too. In January 2025, we welcomed Lisa Leinveer as our newest partner and became Perez Procope Leinveer LLP — though we remain PBP Lawyers. We also said a bittersweet goodbye to founding partner Kelley Bryan, who moved on to the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee. We’re endlessly grateful for her eight years building this firm with us, and glad we still get to work with her in her new role. None of this happens without our law clerk Michelle Alijohn, whose work rarely makes the blog but makes everything else possible.
So here’s to the clients who trusted us, the colleagues who challenged and supported us, and the staff who kept everything running. Ten years in, we’re still small, we’re still mighty, and we’re just getting started on the next decade of client-centred advocacy.
— The Team at PBP Lawyers