Jim Wu is the 2023 CBABC Equity, Diversity and Inclusion award recipient. This is the speech he gave at the CBABC Provincial Council Meeting Awards Luncheon.

Like a lot of people here today, in Grade 10, I read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and that novel introduced me to Atticus Finch who has been heralded by many to be “the role model” and a “paragon of honour” for lawyers. What separated Atticus from the other lawyers was his ability to employ “empathy” which he describes to his daughter, Scout as a “simple trick” whereby you go into someone’s skin and walk around in it to understand them better.

Now putting aside the fact that the process of empathy is anything but a “simple trick”, Atticus’s demonstration of empathy is a little flawed in the sense that it appears to discount completely the role that the individual whose skin you want to enter plays in that process.

Given that the human skin has an area of 22 square feet or the area of a walk-in-closet, there is a lot of space for you to traverse and unless you have that other person guiding you, you will never be able to find much understanding by descending into their skin.

The same can be said with respect to that of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. You can have an entire class of summer students consisting entirely of BIPOC law students, but in the end, if you do not provide them with sufficient mentorship to identity what they want to do and how they personally can become a meaningful part of your firm, then they will leave, and you will have lost yourself an entire class of brilliant lawyers.

I could go on but as I understand that I only have 3 minutes, I will conclude by giving the following three pieces of advice:

For those lawyers who have never hired a BIPOC lawyer and/or a lawyer with a disability, what is preventing you from doing so? By not hiring that demographic, you are losing out. And here is why: by hiring a BIPOC lawyer and/or a lawyer with a disability, you are hiring someone who has experienced on a daily basis, adversity and that daily exposure has given them an enormous amount of resilience which will transform to long-term hard work and loyalty, but only if you make it sustainable for that person.

For those lawyers who have BIPOC lawyers and/or a lawyers with a disability on their team, continue the beautiful work you are doing and involve those lawyers into greater roles and responsibilities so they can reach their full potentials and feel that they belong.

And finally, for those lawyers who are BIPOC and/or have a disability, never see your identity as a hindrance to your career or to life in general. Be proud of who you are. At the same time, be mindful that you are also agents of the law and exercise profound power to shape our society and make our society much more diverse, equal, and inclusive.

Thank you CBABC for your recognition and keeping me and others inspired in the long quest for inclusion within the Bar.”

I appreciate the opportunity to publish the remarks I delivered at the CBABC AGM. For further information about diversification of our Bar, I recommend the work of Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers BC, in particular their award-winning documentary “But I Look Like a Lawyer” available at faclbc.ca/documentary.