Year after year, our team of lawyers and students proudly volunteer with The Law Society Foundation’s ‘Lawyers Feed the Hungry’ program, serving meals to those in need. This vital initiative has operated from Osgoode Hall’s cafeteria since the early 2000s and provides over 1,200 hot meals weekly to Toronto residents. We’re committed to supporting such meaningful community programs that make a positive difference in the lives of fellow Torontonians.
Fogler, Rubinoff LLP recently hosted another impactful Sponsor Day in support of Pro Bono Ontario‘s Free Legal Advice Hotline.
The event brought together dedicated legal professionals from our firm who volunteered their expertise to assist low-income Ontarians facing legal challenges.
We’re proud to recognize Kate Babony, who participated as a first-time volunteer, along with Emily Milana and Diana Saturno for their generous contribution of time and expertise.
This collaboration represents an important step in expanding access to justice across Ontario and highlights our firm’s ongoing commitment to giving back to our communities.
At our 2025 FR Pride Event, we were privileged to learn from Dr. Adrienne Rosen‘s extraordinary life of purpose and achievement. Her presentation resonated deeply across our organization, highlighting how principled leadership can drive both business success and social progress. From her early advocacy as part of the historic Brunswick Four to pioneering medical logistics solutions, Dr. Rosen exemplifies the values we aspire to uphold.
We’re grateful to Dr. Rosen for her authenticity in sharing her journey, including the important role her wife Myra White has played as her life partner and business collaborator. Special thanks to Myriah Graves for facilitating this meaningful gathering that reinforces our commitment to inclusive leadership and community building.
We had the privilege of hosting an extraordinary International Women’s Day event at our firm, organized by Tea Obradovic and Hailey Abramsky, Chairs of our Women@Foglers Committee.
Our guest speaker, Jordana Goldlist shared her remarkable journey from facing adversity in her youth to becoming a renowned criminal defence lawyer, TEDx speaker, and podcast host. Her powerful story of transformation moved everyone in the room and embodied this year’s International Women’s Day spirit.
The impact of the event extended beyond inspiration. Together, with Kits for a Cause, we assembled 96 welcome kits for Covenant House Toronto and Sistering with heartfelt messages of hope. These kits will directly support women and youth in need throughout our community.
Special thanks to Jordana for her candid, moving presentation, and to Tea and Hailey for orchestrating such a meaningful event. Your dedication to empowering others and giving back to the community exemplifies the change we wish to see in the world.
Our Associates spent the afternoon volunteering with Pro Bono Ontario‘s Free Legal Advice Hotline, providing important services to individuals who have essential legal needs but cannot afford a lawyer. By volunteering their time and answering calls on on the legal advice hotline, our firm was able to help make a difference in ensuring Ontarians can access the legal help they need!
Our Fogler Rubinoff family strongly condemns the unprecedented, barbaric attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel.
While we in Canada live with the privilege of having the expectation of a peaceful existence, the Middle East presents a much different matrix of facts which make peaceful co-existence idealistic when the government in Gaza is a terrorist group that denies Israel’s right to exist. It is important to speak out against organizations like Hamas who wish to annihilate the Jewish people.
We support Israel and all its people. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the innocent victims of this tragedy. We specifically pray for the safe return of the kidnapped civilian bystanders.
Last week, Fogler, Rubinoff’s annual meal sponsorship to Lawyers Feed the Hungry, provided 250 people with a much-needed warm meal. Although we were unable to be there in person, we were glad to support this important program in our community.
We sat down with Micheline Gray-Smith, who volunteers her time at the Ryerson Law & Business Clinic. The Law & Business Clinic provides free legal services in a variety of business law matters to entrepreneurs and small businesses that cannot afford to retain a lawyer. Micheline shared with us her experience and the mentorship opportunities she has been able to provide.
Micheline, tell us how you got involved with the Ryerson Business & Law Clinic?
I was first introduced to the organization as a first-year Associate by Rick Moscone. Seeing a Partner with a full practice make the Clinic a priority, tells you that it’s something important. His commitment inspired me to stay involved with the Clinic and my role has evolved over time. At the beginning, I was working with one group of students and I would supervise their work, provide them with precedents, give them instructions on how to communicate with clients, and coach them through the process of advising clients. Now, in addition to providing that guidance, I have taken on a mentorship role to coach our first-year Associates alongside the group of volunteer Ryerson students and I supervise the whole process – answering any questions and guiding the our Associates, the student volunteers and the Clinic’s clients through the program. The reason I stay involved in the program is twofold: one it’s helping under-served individuals and businesses who need legal services and potentially don’t have the resources to pay for them and secondly, it is being able to provide students with exposure to the practice of law, which can help them decide whether they want to pursue attending law school. I have mentored four cohorts of students and being able to stay in touch with them over LinkedIn and see what they’ve done with their careers after graduating from the Ryerson Law & Business Program is really interesting – especially when they decide to go to law school in part because of conversations and experiences I’ve shared with them.
What advice would you give to a new lawyer who is looking for more opportunity to give back to their own community?
I would say the most important thing is finding something that is rewarding for you personally because that will give you that extra boost in your contribution. For example, when I was in law school, I was involved in a similar law clinic program. It’s something that I really enjoyed as a law student. Now that I’m participating in this program as a lawyer, I remember what it was like as a law student – not really knowing what my career would look like; not knowing what practice area I would pursue; and discovering that along the way. It’s really rewarding for me to see students discovering what they want to do and how they want their careers to unfold. It gives me energy, a sense of purpose, and encourages me to dedicate the time because I know what it was like, especially having graduated so recently.
Does this experience give you a different perspective, which you can bring to your law practice?
Helping the businesses in this program is really interesting because you get to see their growth from a start-up stage as they figure out how to structure their business. After three years, I can look back at the companies we helped initially and see how the decisions that we made together impacted the trajectory of the business.
The experience has even helped me when working with our firm clients, whose businesses are more established, because I now understand why their entity is set up the way it is and what challenges they might have faced early on. Seeing the whole evolution and working with entrepreneurs is inspiring. I can understand how they got to where they are now and what types of decisions they had to make at a really early stage that led them to where they are. Sometimes it is about what legal advice they should have gotten — but didn’t, and how we fix that at the point when they seek our advice. The reason I stay involved in the program is twofold: one it’s helping under-served individuals who need legal services and potentially don’t have the resources to pay for them and secondly, it’s being able to provide students with exposure to the practice of law, which can help them decide whether they want to pursue attending law school.
What has been the most rewarding aspect about volunteering with the Clinic? Do you have an anecdote about an experience that really moved you?
Firstly, it’s a great opportunity to grow as a lawyer. Particularly as a young lawyer, it was a chance to interact closely with clients and be their main point of reference. Secondly, being able to give back to the legal community because we were all in that position at one point. Wondering whether we should go to law school and whether it was the right path for us and looking for someone who can give you that kind of guidance and mentorship. If you can be that for a student, it’s very rewarding. Thirdly, I enjoy seeing the impact that some of the services and advice the students provide have on the Clinic’s clients. We work with entrepreneurs who are taking a risk in starting something new, who are looking to pursue what is often a lifelong vision and start their business. Being able to contribute to that dream, even in a small way, is really rewarding.
To learn more about Ryerson Business Law Clinic visit: https://www.ryerson.ca/tedrogersschool/lawbusinessclinic/
It has been a frigid start to 2022 so we were happy to participate in a winter clothing drive to to support New Circles Community Services
Foglers along with our friends at Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP, Adair Goldblatt Bieber LLP, WeirFoulds LLP, Weintraub Erskin Huang LLP and Israel Foulon Wong LLP were able to collect and donate hundreds of pre-loved winter coats, hats, scarves, glove shoes and boots to support the clients of New Circles Community Services in its efforts to #KeepTorontoWarm.
We sat down with Bonnie Fish, who serves as the Board President for the Israel Cancer Research Fund, to hear about her experience being part of an organization that for the past 45 years has helped support scientists in Israel make major breakthroughs in cancer research.
Bonnie, tell us how you got involved with the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF)?
I was first introduced to the organization through my colleagues, and current ICRF board members, Ian Kady and Tammy Anklewicz, who invited me to attend a number of ICRF fundraising events including, their Women of Action event which recognizes women for their achievements in health sciences, community, philanthropy and business. At that time, I had recently lost a close friend to cancer and after learning more about the history of the organization and the cancer research ICRF was funding, I decided I wanted to do more to give back to this cause and to honour my friend. So I joined the Board and then spent a year on the Executive Committee and now I am in the third year of my term as Board President.
In your opinion, what is the most important work that this organization does?
ICRF’s mission is to support the best and brightest scientists conducting ground breaking cancer research in Israel. What stands out about this organization is that the funds raised for ICRF go directly to life-saving scientific research and not to “bricks and mortar.” Annual grants are given directly to Israeli cancer researchers at all of the leading academic and biomedical research centers in Israel. To date ICRF has contributed more than $83 million to support over 2,700 grants for Israel based cancer researchers. ICRF has funded scientists who went on to make incredible medical breakthroughs in cancer including discoveries which led to the development of Gleevec, an important treatment for leukemia, and Doxil, a drug for the treatment of ovarian, breast and AIDS related cancers. Two ICRF-funded scientists (Professors Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology) received the 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Choosing to serve on a non-profit board of directors enables you to become an integral part of solving problems in your community. Similarly, as a lawyer, much of your time is spent solving problems. Does this experience with the ICRF give you a different perspective, one which you can bring to your law practice?
Absolutely. The not-for-profit world is a whole world unto itself and it has been a very different experience from my law practice. In my volunteer role, the experiences and connections I’ve made have enhanced my understanding of the world outside of the law and have given me a much broader perspective. I feel like everything that you do outside of your legal practice in a volunteer capacity, adds a new dimension to your work and a better understanding of the people that you deal with on a regular basis.
What advice would you give to a new lawyer who is looking for the opportunity to give back to their own community?
That’s a really great question. I would say in my very earliest days of practice when I was struggling with not only my own time commitments to the practice, but also raising a family, I would have found it extremely hard to commit to doing something at this level, like being President of a Board. However, even early on in my career, I would always try to get involved with something – a charity walk, volunteering at a soup kitchen, donating food and clothing to those in need and I’d get my family involved. Small commitments at first. Making the time to help out a cause or support a charity even if just for a few hours, allowed me to feel like I was doing something other than being a lawyer. As time went on, I was able to give back more and build upon those experiences. Then one day you reach a point in your career where you have some connection to a charity, either through a colleague or experience and you are able to take the next step and play a bigger role in giving back to that cause. It is very satisfying when that moment comes.
We use cookies to improve functionality and performance of our website and to provide you with the best possible browsing experience. These cookies include those which are strictly necessary for website operation, as well as those which are used for functionality and performance purposes.
For more information on how our website use cookies please view our privacy policy.AcceptPrivacy Policy
