Sherri Walsh, LL.B

Throughout Sherri Walsh’s work and community involvement she has been successful in giving a voice to and protecting the rights of people, often the most vulnerable people: people who live in poverty, people with disabilities, Indigenous people and children. Called to the Bar of Manitoba in 1986, Walsh is the Managing Partner of Hill Sokalski Walsh LLP. Her practice covers virtually all areas of civil litigation with an emphasis on human rights and employment law, securities and insurance litigation and political and administrative law. She conducts harassment and discrimination investigations for corporations and post-secondary educational institutions and has often been retained in criminal law matters to protect the privacy rights of victims of sexual assault. She participates in and conducts mediations and arbitrations and acts as an adjudicator under the Manitoba Framework Agreement for Treaty Land entitlement.

In 2011, Walsh was appointed to be commission counsel to the Phoenix Sinclair Inquiry, the first woman in Manitoba to hold such a position.

She served as an adjudicator under the Human Rights Code (Manitoba) from 2007 to 2019 and served as the first chief adjudicator under the Code from 2012 to 2019.

Walsh is also the City of Winnipeg’s first Integrity Commissioner, having been appointed to that position by Winnipeg’s City Council on February 22, 2017.

She presides over discipline hearings for the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association and is a member of the investigation unit of the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada.

From 2001 to 2011, she was a part-time chair of the Appeal Commission – Workers Compensation of Manitoba.

A strong believer in the importance of education, Walsh taught Introduction to Civil Procedure at the Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba for many years and a course on Poverty and the Law at the University of Winnipeg.

In 2018, Walsh was admitted as a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America – the first woman in the province to be given this honour.

In 1999, Walsh received The Manitoba Bar Association’s Pro Bono award. In 2000, she received the inaugural Manitoba Human Rights Commitment Award, co-sponsored by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Manitoba Human Rights Commission and the Community Legal Education Association. The Manitoba League of Persons with Disabilities awarded her a Human Rights Star in 2006. In 2013, she was awarded Female Litigator of the Year by Benchmark Litigation Canada.

In 2016, she was awarded the inaugural Nelly Award in recognition of her work to promote social justice, human rights and the rights of women and girls in Manitoba.

In the community, Walsh served as chair of the food bank, Winnipeg Harvest, for four years and volunteer red with that organization since 1995. She served for many years as a director of LEAF Manitoba and LEAF’s National Legal Committee. She is currently a director on the Board of the University of Winnipeg Foundation and the Manito Ahbee Festival.

In truly Nellie McClung fashion, Walsh is both a fighter and a trailblazer!