My Revised Work

Interview and Profile

  At its simplest, commercial litigation is “people fighting over money”, says Matthew Latella, recounting a glib aphorism among lawyers. He immediately elaborates - “that is not to in any way trivialize it, because there is a significant element of emotion that is present in even the most seemingly dry of business disputes.” Whether discussing the minutiae of legal proceedings or massive cases worth millions of dollars, what shines through in Latella’s perspective on his decades long legal career is his deep passion for the human side of the law and the people he has helped.

  Latella was a debater from the start. As a child, he engaged in logical disputes with his eldest brother, forcing him to become “conscious of the need to formulate compelling arguments”, even from a young age. Six years older than Matthew, his brother Dave had a proclivity for discourse – both political and personal – that made the young boy swiftly develop reasoning skills and global awareness beyond his years. This penchant for debate soon grew into a passion, and his eventual decision to attend law school was “entirely predictable” to his friends. Graduating from Dalhousie law school in 1995, Latella soon began articling at the firm Baker Mckenzie, where he has worked ever since, eventually making his way up the ranks and becoming a Senior Partner.

  Latella’s earliest perception of what it meant to be a lawyer was related to defined by the career’s importance; “Not just in the sense of helping people, but in the sense of dealing with big issues, and being in the arena…to deal with matters of justice and things that were of great importance to people and to society”. From the beginning, Latella had his sights set on both the parts and the whole, an outlook that shaped his entire career. After twenty six years as a lawyer, Latella has had an abundance of experience with these “matters of justice” that he claims drew him to the law all those years ago. The two cases that stand out the most to him each had tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in the balance, yet Latella only briefly mentioned mentions their staggering financial sides, instead focusing on how personally enriching these experiences were, and their importance for the integrity of the law. Justice, not money, was what stood out to him.

  Latella was fascinated by the political connotations of representing a company from Kyrgyzstan, a “nascent democracy in Central Asia", in an international case surrounding a state owned gold mining company and its attempted seizure at the hands of several parties all around the globe. He connected with his clients through learning to understand each other's respective legal systems, eventually helping them win their case against all odds in a thrilling "comeback story", retaining their assets and remaining steadfast in the face of enormous international pressure. He was enthusiastic about the “sheer James Bond-esque fun” of seizing a ship full of fifty thousand tons of Pakistani coal with the aid of spies. Using an ex parte Mareva injunction to storm the vessel in the middle of the night, catching the government by surprise, Latella’s feat made headlines halfway across the globe. The national rivalry between his Indian clients and the Pakistani government only added to this intrigue. He proudly recalled how his clients were “overwhelmed with gratitude” for this unlikely success.

  While Latella evidently takes great pride in the personal impact his work has on his clients, he also finds the broader societal impact of his work deeply important. Latella muses; “your legacy is the cases you argue”. Having his very own work become integrated into “the legal fabric that governs our society” through the common law is a “rewarding and important” experience. The precedent set in cases like the ones Latella argues “establishes rules that other lawyers and their clients are bound by in the future”, meaning Latella’s legacy does not end with his clients, but potentially extends to everybody who interacts with the Canadian legal system. The impact of his work on both individuals and the law itself is crucial to Latella, and neither his far reaching legal legacy nor the personal impact and emotions of the people he represents goes unnoticed. Together, they give Latella’s work the great importance he had always strived for.

  Latella believes that the heart of his career and the most important principle for maintaining justice is the rule of law. To him, this rule means that “there is an agreed upon set of rules that apply to everybody. Nobody is above the law, everybody is equal before the law, and there has to be a basic sense of fairness”. He believes these core tenets stand above all else, which makes the way they have been threatened in recent years particularly frightening. In the wake of the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the subsequent direction of the Republican party, Latella believes“the sense of justice that is supposed to underpin the law is under attack and challenged in ways that I never imagined would’ve been possible even ten years ago.” He understands better than most how the law is a living concept, inexorably tied to societies and the people within them, and the way it has been challenged frightens him.

  Latella remains optimistic, but preaches caution, warning that “we have to be ever vigilant to guard against the erosion of the rule of law, and I think that it’s bound up with what it means to be a democracy”. Through all the people he has seen it affect, and the incredible impact he has witnessed it have, the law has become something deeply human to Matthew Latella, and something he hopes to defend as vigorously as any of his clients.

Latella, Matthew. Commercial Litigator Interview. Interview by Willow Latella, 25 Feb. 2023.

Reflection

  When discussing a decades long legal career, there will inevitably be a lot of ground to cover. Trying to condense such a career into a single profile without diminishing its breadth of accomplishments is no small feat. When I initially wrote this assignment, I tried to use my limited space to focus on the big picture, using broad, sweeping remarks about Latella’s notion of justice and what passions drove him in an attempt to capture that breadth of accomplishment. In hindsight however, this broad approach limited my ability to humanize Latella. Without expanding on the personal anecdotes I had conveyed, these big picture statements on the heart of justice felt less deserved, less connected to the picture I had painted of this lawyer.

  In editing this piece, I tried to back up the core themes of my profile with more detailed stories about Latella’s education and childhood and more specific explorations of his largest career achievements. Between these additions and some tweaks to my word choice throughout, the narrative created a much stronger emotional connection between the reader and the subject.

  The addition I felt most strongly about was at the end of the fifth paragraph, where I drew a direct connection between my explanation of Latella’s legacy and the most memorable moments of his career and his earlier remarks about wanting to work with matters of justice and things of great importance. Those two sections were no longer individual parts of a profile, but now came together as a cohesive image, setting up Latella’s dreams and later, delivering on them.

Final Poetry Assignment

The Golden Man

The Gazing Pool

A black not matte, not dull, not murky
Nor stained by gloss-white trim of shine
A pure crisp black like the cold night sky;
To whose embrace flees the quivering forest
In the absence of her beloved moon

A blackness that subsumes horizons
Swallows looming trunks and sprawling hills
Encroaching, leaving empty space
But for the subject, brilliant foreground
Adorned by contrast’s dazzling jewels

Her image not distorted, merely
Fuzzed around its edges
Pale silhouette and golden curls
Turned spectral by the midnight tarn
In all its glassy splendor

The unseen world, excised by gazing
Into that inky, aqueous embrace
That mirrors peering eyes yet still obscures
The weald so steeped in stillness just beyond
Seen only as a rippling, dancing shadow

The placid forest, vast and hidden
Still breathes its raspy rustling sighs
A rise and fall, reminding those who gaze
Of all the life that dwells behind their back
Obscured by deliquescent stillness

Reflection

  For this assignment, I focused on revising The Golden Man, as I was quite happy with The Gazing Pool. The Golden Man poem came as a result of an idea I had, a metaphor for trying to challenge fate and the struggle against apparent inevitability. I developed this imagery to represent the human urge to cling to one vision of an idealized future to the point of self sabotage, using a very dreamlike setting and subject. The image itself is impressionistic and quite abstract, and I thought it would suit a poem well. I think I was right about that, and honestly I was very happy with the initial poem. I see this as more of a lateral revision than a direct improvement, focusing on and enhancing different aspects of this metaphoric idea at the detriment of others.

  My initial approach was a fairly standard poem, though it does not use a particular rhyme scheme, lots of lines rhyme and the stanzas flow in a very poetic style. I used plenty of poetic devices, and my final product was quite aesthetically pleasing. For this revision, I sacrificed a lot of the standard structural elements of the poem, forgoing the more typical form for something akin to prose-poetry. I sacrificed the rhyme, rhythm, and much of the poem’s initial feel for something far more free form, which opened up the opportunity to explore the original concept and intention behind my poem with greater clarity. I believe this newer version of the poem, while less flowing, is more thought provoking as to the implications and meaning of trying to alter the Golden Man’s stride. To give this version more of a poetic feel despite its free form diction and prosaic style, I tried to alter the line divisions, word placement, and spacing in such a way to give emphasis to certain words and retain a sense of rhythm.