Firm launched last year with the aim of providing high quality work and a distinct work culture
When Aneka Jiwaji and her sister, Afshaan, walked away from their jobs at Vancouver boutique law firms to start their own firm last year, they did so with one intention: to create the type of work environment they both wanted but could not find.
“We did not see a firm like this in the top-tier commercial space,” Jiwaji told Canadian Lawyer on Thursday. “Something that is women-led, women-owned, focused on excellence in women and doing high-quality, specialized corporate advisory [services] and commercial litigation.”
Jiwaji explained that she and her sister had worked in Western Canada’s legal market for about a decade. In that time, they struggled to find a shop that combined “the excellence of the legal work and the top-tier work that we were used to doing, with an environment that allowed women to really excel and be really excellent without dealing with all of the normal sort of things that are normalized in our industry, like constant misogyny, egos, microaggressions,” Jiwaji says.
Enter Jiwaji Law, based in downtown Vancouver but serving clients across British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario. The sisters’ father, also a lawyer, previously ran his own firm under the same banner in Edmonton.
At the end of April, Jiwaji Law added a team member. As counsel, Ariyana Dhawan will handle complex commercial, intellectual property, and tax litigation matters. She was previously an associate at Vancouver litigation boutique McEwan Partners.
Jiwaji says the firm’s mission included elevating racialized women to leadership roles and sponsoring the next generation of excellent women lawyers.
“Ariyana fit completely seamlessly into that mission,” Jiwaji says, noting that they had previously worked together. “I could see that she was someone [who] had all of the chops and the necessary commitment to become a really, really good litigator and a really good, specialized lawyer.”
Dhawan says she was attracted to the firm based on her understanding that “leadership in a law firm definitely affects the culture of that firm.
“For me, having representation and leadership in the legal profession really is something that’s important to me,” Dhawan adds. “And wanting to be at a place where, of course, we do that complex, high-level work in an environment where I get that mentorship and sponsorship.”
Dhawan’s addition to the firm brings its headcount to four. Jiwaji says she has plans to continue expanding the firm, but wants to do so in a way that preserves its collaborative culture.
“We’re really intentional about growing organically, so we are not actively looking,” Jiwaji says, adding, however, that the firm would potentially make an exception for a great lawyer who fits in the practice.
“I know every firm says this, but we are doing things very differently here,” Jiwaji says. “We need people who want to buy into that culture and really lean into the values of this firm and really be committed to growing it with us.”
