Manjot Hallen has two major passions as a lawyer. One is defending injury victims as a partner at Warnett Hallen. The second is promoting greater diversity in the legal profession and, in particular, among the judiciary.
Hallen also wants to improve the image of the South Asian community, which is repeatedly tarnished with negative media coverage as a result of gang conflicts in Metro Vancouver.
“There are more lawyers, doctors, and engineers who are South Asian and from the Sikh community than there are gangsters, if you just do the straight math,” Hallen recently told the Straight by phone. “One thing we can be doing is highlighting these individuals and highlighting the contributions that they make to British Columbia rather than focusing on the negative.”
He practises what he preaches as the chair of the B.C. Children's Hospital A Night of Miracles Gala.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently appointed a judge of South Asian ancestry, Mahmud Jamal, to the Supreme Court of Canada. While Hallen applauded that move, he also acknowledged that B.C.’s superior courts still have a vast majority of judges with anglicized names.
In fact, there are relatively few superior court judges of Indigenous, South Asian, Chinese, Latin American, or African ancestry—something pointed out last December in a pair of tweets by Vancouver lawyer Veronica Cheng.
Hallen is a member of the South Asian Bar Association, which advocates for greater diversity at all levels of the legal profession,...
Read Full Story: https://www.straight.com/news/vancouver-personal-injury-lawyer-manjot-hallen-advocates-for-diverse-judiciary-in-bc
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