WEL Partners announced that Marian Passmore has joined the firm as an associate.
According to the firm's press release, prior to joining the Toronto-based trusts and estates boutique, Passmore worked for almost 10 years in the not-for-profit sector advocating on behalf of financial consumers.
Previously at the Canadian Foundation for the Advancement of Investor Rights (FAIR Canada) as director of policy and chief operating officer, Passmore is the co-researcher and co-author with Laura Tamblyn Watts of the 2017 joint Report on Vulnerable Investors: Elder Abuse, Financial Exploitation, Due Influence and Diminished Mental Capacity and a co-founder of Canada's first Investor Protection Clinic at Osgoode Hall Law School.
She has prepared numerous submissions to securities regulators and governments on behalf of financial consumers including areas such as the need and desirability of a statutory best interest standard for investment dealers and representatives in their dealings with financial consumers, improving the detection, prevention and response to senior financial abuse and investment fraud, and reforms to investor recovery and dispute resolution.
Passmore articled and practised litigation at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP from 1995 to 2000, and from 2000 to 2005 worked in-house at Ernst & Young LLP's legal department as legal counsel where she had a litigation management role including defending professional negligence actions.