Second-year Osgoode Hall Law School undergraduate student Robin Senzilet has received the TitlePLUS Essay Prize. Senzilet is the first Canadian law school student to win the new award, which was created by the Lawyers’ Professional Indemnity Company (LawPRO) in Sept. 2006 to encourage and recognize outstanding legal scholarship in the practice of real estate law.
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Above: Stephen Freedman (left), legal counsel for TitlePLUS, Osgoode Hall Law School student Robin Senzilet, and Michelle Strom, president & CEO of LawPRO |
"This is a tremendous achievement, particularly given the fact that there is only a single award for all Canadian law students," said Osgoode Hall Law School Dean Patrick Monahan in announcing the award.
Senzilet’s award-winning essay, titled "Mitigating Error in the Practice of Real Estate Law", used the theories of British psychologist James Reason – one of the world’s leading experts on the subject of human error – as the framework for a discussion of the possible explanations for the high incidence of error on the part of real estate lawyers and for suggestions for error prevention in the future.
Senzilet spent approximately two months this past fall researching and writing her paper as part of the course work for Osgoode Professor Reuben Rosenblatt’s real estate course. She received the award before a crowd of more than 450 people on Sunday, May 6, as part of the TitlePLUS 10th anniversary conference in Niagara Falls, Ont. The award, including the cash prize of $3,000, was presented by Stephen Freedman, legal counsel for TitlePLUS, and Michelle Strom, president & CEO of LawPRO.
Students from law schools across Canada (excluding Quebec) were eligible to enter the essay contest. The entries, which had to address a current issue relevant to the practice of real estate law and be under 6,000 words in length, were judged by a panel of five judges appointed by LawPRO, an insurance company incorporated in 1990 by the Law Society of Upper Canada and licensed to provide professional liability insurance and title insurance in numerous jurisdictions across Canada.