Late Lunch, Perfect Fit

Courtesy luncheon turns into unexpected hire

In 2024, representatives from the Edmonton offices of Felesky Flynn LLP met with that year’s recipient of a yearly tax law scholarship the firm has been awarding since 2009. The courtesy luncheon marked the first time they’d met with one of the recipients. It might not be the last.

When Melanie Williams, ’23 JD, met with Felesky Flynn partner Jeremy Herbert, ’04 LLB, and associate Justin Di Liello ’18 JD, and the firm’s business manager, Shae MacPherson, for lunch at the Royal Mayfair Golf and Country Club in July 2024, the timing was perfect.

Williams was already articling with a full-service law firm, and the Felesky Flynn team wasn’t actively recruiting. But it was one of those meetings where things just click.

“I wasn’t always 100 per cent sure that I wanted to focus on tax law, and that’s why I was articling at a firm that was more of a full-service environment,” Williams says. “But the moment I started talking with Jeremy and Justin — it was like we were speaking the same language.”

That is to say, they were all fluent in tax law. It was music to Herbert and Di Liello’s ears. “In our world there’s not that many people who actually want to do tax law and are passionate about it,” says Herbert.

“Our tag line is, ‘We’re trying to find creative solutions to complex problems,’ ” Herbert says. “And most people don’t want to find complex problems, let alone look for creative solutions. So if you find somebody who’s like, ‘Hey I’m interested in that complex problem’ and we know that they have the horsepower to do it and they are personable, then we’re obviously interested.”

The feeling was mutual. Herbert had taught the Corporate Taxation law course for which Williams had been awarded the scholarship. He remembered her as being a sharp, inquisitive student. And Williams had worked with Di Liello at another firm while she was a summer student. Her experiences with both were overwhelmingly positive.

 Williams says that as an instructor, Herbert was genuinely interested in his students’ success and always made time for them. She welcomed the invitation to meet. “For all the scholarships I’ve won, they are the only donors who I got the chance to meet,” she says. “They took the time to connect with me.”

The scholarship itself, she says, had a financial impact, but the personal impact is what she valued the most. “Yes, it helped me with tuition, but it also told me that all my hard work was paying off, that I was going down the right path, and it gave me a real morale boost,” she says. “I could go on and on about how it made me feel to win that kind of award.”

And maybe that’s the final element of being suited to practising tax law, understanding the impact you have on others: those you work with and those you work for. Now working as an associate with Felesky Flynn, Williams spends her days working with numbers, laws, and people in stressful circumstances.

“When a client is faced with tax planning decisions, an audit or a CRA dispute, a tax lawyer can offer strategic advice and take some stress away on the tax problem that they’re facing,” Williams says. “There’s that human side of things, too — helping people find relief and strengthen their financial future.”