Durant Barristers is very pleased to welcome Sarah DelVillano (she/her/elle) to the team as a summer associate. She is currently entering her fourth and final year of the joint Masters and Juris Doctor (MA/JD) program with the University of Ottawa and Carleton University’s Norman Patterson School of International Affairs. She is joining Durant Barristers after completing her work as an intern at CCSK Criminal Law through the Criminal Lawyers' Association's 100 Interns Project.
We are incredibly lucky to have Sarah as part of our team. She obtained her bachelors degree with high distinction in human rights and with a double minor in political science and anthropology from Carleton University in 2017. She then pursued an internship with Citizens for Public Justice. Sarah’s work with Citizens for Public Justice was extremely impressive and demonstrated the importance of lived experience within advocacy work.
In November of 2017 she began working at the frontline of Ottawa’s opioid crisis with Ottawa Inner City Health. In that capacity, she advocated for her clients in a number of different institutional settings and was able to leverage her connections with Ottawa’s legal community to assist them in accessing services. She also published an article in the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Journal entitled “At-a-glance-Supervised Injection Services: a community-based response to the opioid crisis in the City of Ottawa, Canada”—which was one of the journal’s most cited articles in 2019.
When Sarah returns to law school, she will be working in the criminal law division of the University of Ottawa Community Legal Clinic. She is also assisting with a book for the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child about the relationship between the commercial sexual exploitation of children and the private sector.
Sarah is interested in fighting systemic injustices and studies the effects on marginalized groups within Canada and beyond. She is also a mother of two young children. She will be a tremendous asset to our firm and clients.
Welcome Sarah!