Thinking creatively about law

After establishing herself as a conceptual artist, fashion designer and academic legal researcher, Mara Verna, BFA (art ed.) 98, knows how to change careers with style. In her latest incarnation, the newly minted law school graduate coordinates a research team at McGill University's Faculty of Law in partnership with the Center for Legal and Economic Studies based in Moscow.

Artist and former entrepreneur Mara Varna in front of McGill University's faculty of law building, chancellor day hall, where she recently earned a law degree and now coordinates a study called "the rule of law and economic development in Russia." She will soon head to Toronto to article with the Ontario ministry of the attorney general. | Photo by Linda Rutenberg

Trained as an artist, the Toronto-born Verna arrived at Concordia with a passion for learning. "Fine Arts was an incredible community, but the best part was that it allowed me to learn about learning," she recalls. "People like professor Lorrie Blair [now Fine Arts' associate dean of Academic and Student Affairs] had many progressive ideas and helped me to grow as a creative thinker."

When she graduated, Verna was awarded the Art Education Prize and lined up an art exhibit at the Eastern Edge Gallery in St. John's, Nfld. So she did what anyone would: enrol in a post¬graduate math course at Concordia. "It sounds silly, but I wanted to make sure that I had learned something," Verna says. "It wasn't until I got an A plus in the course that I was convinced. If I can come out of a Fine Arts degree and learn math, then that proves I received an excellent education."

Verna chose law: "It was a natural evolution. A lot of my projects as an artist engaged with socio-economic and indigenous issues, insights which have enriched my legal education. My strength as a conceptual thinker and my business experience have also proven valuable."

Verna graduated from McGill Law in December 2011. Since then, she's been project coordinator and principal researcher at the faculty under Nandini Ramanujam, whose team is conducting a comparative analysis across Brazil, Russia, India and China. "Our project looks at the system and structure in which law operates within the context of transition economies, examining the challenges that lie ahead which may hinder growth potential," Verna explains. "It has been an incredible opportunity to gain more in-depth knowledge on issues that have global reach."

She'll tap into that experience when she starts articling at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General in Toronto in August, ready to embark on yet another career -- as a practising lawyer.