Legal Aid Alberta celebrates 35 long-time employees
When Tahira Karim first joined Legal Aid Alberta (LAA), she was an ambitious articling student seeking opportunities to deepen her courtroom experience and litigation expertise.
Tahira, a University of Ottawa law grad, was already applying her knowledge while articling at another law firm. Thanks to the mentorship of her articling principal, she landed a spot with LAA’s family law office in Calgary. Even though she hadn’t pictured a career in family law, the experience made an immediate impact.
“I was thrown right into the courtroom and the child welfare docket with a mentor — a very senior lawyer to guide me — and I guess I haven’t looked back,” says Tahira, now 15 years into her tenure with LAA.
Celebrating 290 years of service to Albertans
Tahira is one of 35 long-time LAA employees who were honoured for their contributions to the organization at recent celebrations in Edmonton and Calgary. The 2025 Long Service Award recipients have a combined 290 years of service supporting LAA’s work to protect access to justice and fight for the legal rights of Albertans.
From the outset, Tahira says she embraced every opportunity to learn and grow in her profession. She had done her homework about LAA and its mission, but “it was truly different to come in and experience it first-hand.” She was tasked with handling multiple files every day in child welfare court and gained experience with emergency protection orders and all aspects of family law.
“I just grew my lawyer experience,” she recalls.
Mentoring the next generation
After several years working at LAA, in 2019, Tahira earned a promotion as one of two legal services managers for the family law team in Calgary. Again, she benefited from strong mentors who helped provide guidance in her new role.
“I feel very fortunate to have a really excellent group of people to work with and to continue LAA’s progress. We always strive to do better for our clients, for Albertans and our staff, and I really feel that we’ve endeavoured to do that, and we keep trying to just be better.”
These days, Tahira, in her role as LAA’s managing director of family and immigration legal services, is overseeing and mentoring the family and immigration staff lawyers and students.
“We’ve been very fortunate to have very high-calibre students who want to work here,” she says. “I think lawyers who really understand the profession know that there is an obligation to continue to be a mentor for younger lawyers in the profession so they can develop and aspire to be ethical, very high-quality legal practising minds in Alberta.”
Even after 15 years on the job, Tahira says the work never gets old. She continues to find inspiration and motivation by helping Albertans who need it most, whether that’s disadvantaged Albertans who’ve fallen on hard times financially, who are struggling with addictions or mental health challenges or who have experienced issues related to intergenerational trauma.
“There’s a lot of heartbreak in the work that we do, but at the core of it is trying to find the best possible outcome for the client.
I fell in love with the court atmosphere, the high energy, fast pace and think-on-your-feet experience. And of course, I was truly impacted by the clients that we were helping.”
Celebrating a quarter-century at LAA
LAA can’t fulfill its mandate without the dedication of talented professionals behind the scenes, from legal intake specialists in the Client Contact Centre who field tens of thousands of phone calls each year to IT analysts who keep systems running to administrative professionals who help manage information flows.
April Henne has seen a lot of changes during a remarkable quarter-century at LAA, most of them working behind the scenes as an administrative assistant. In the early days, she remembers the large filing room in the Calgary office and the mountain of paper case files that required physical storage. Computers led to more digitization, and now, in the age of AI, tools continue to advance and change how the organization works, especially in a complex organization with 300 hybrid staff across Alberta.
“Every month brings something new and different,” April says.
One thing that hasn’t changed in 25 years? Everyone at LAA works together for a common purpose, she adds.
We are all one team. We help each other, even if we’re not in the role — like a lawyer or a legal assistant — it doesn’t really matter. Those lines are kind of blurred; you’re just part of the team, and you chip in where you need to.”
It’s not surprising to learn what keeps Henne motivated to come to work every day: the people.
“I really like my co-workers and, because I’ve been around for a long time, we all know each other really well. They’re my friends as well as my co-workers,” she explains.
It’s not just her teammates that make LAA a rewarding place to work. She also enjoys being on the frontlines and helping clients access the right information, at the right time, from explaining how justice of the peace bail works to application and billing processes.
“I really enjoy helping people understand how Legal Aid Alberta works. I really like being able to help people.”
From private practice to rural roster to full-time LAA lawyer
Staff lawyer Chris Chromik just celebrated his five-year anniversary, but his journey with LAA dates back even longer and includes experiences working as a roster lawyer in rural Alberta and at legal aid offices in Red Deer and Edmonton.
After articling in criminal law at a downtown Edmonton law firm, Chris moved about an hour southeast to Camrose, where he worked as both a defence counsel and a prosecutor with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.
As a young lawyer looking to gain experience and pay the bills, in 2015, he joined LAA’s roster — a network of 1,200 private-practice lawyers who take on legal aid certificates in every corner of the province. As a roster lawyer, Chris often took on duty counsel work, meaning he provided legal advice to adults, youth and families. Duty counsel provides legal advice in several ways, including on the phone before a client’s first court appearance, at the courthouse or at bail hearings.
Not only did it help increase his caseload, but he truly enjoyed the work.
I liked being able to help people that didn’t have the access or knowledge for core processes. I liked the variety.”
Even after he left criminal law for an opportunity to work as legal counsel at a pipeline company, he continued to take duty counsel shifts. Duty counsel gave him lots of different opportunities to practise law and serve clients. He was in different court locations for each shift and got to work on a variety of cases.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which created havoc across industries, including the oil and gas sector, Chromik was laid off from the pipeline company. He continued to work as a roster lawyer when a colleague let him know about a temporary role covering a maternity leave at LAA’s Red Deer office. He jumped at the opportunity.
That temporary gig eventually led to full-time work in LAA’s Edmonton office, and Chromik hasn’t looked back.
“It doesn’t feel like five years at all. It’s a great job, a great place to work,” he says.
Although his initial motivations for taking legal aid cases focused on his own career growth and survival, today he’s inspired by helping others. If anything, the challenges are even more complex today than they were five years ago, he says, as the cost of living rises and clients grapple with realities of living well below the poverty line. The role of an LAA lawyer doesn’t stop in the courtroom and often involves connecting people to other supports and services they need.
“The people I was speaking with five years ago are the same today; they’re people, and the struggles are real, and that hasn’t changed,” Chromik says. “The reason I wanted to join Legal Aid Alberta and that sense of being able to make a difference for those that don’t have counsel, that’s what drives me still.
“We play a pretty big role in people’s lives and help them figure out pretty serious problems. That’s very rewarding.”
Join Legal Aid Alberta
If you’re interested in a career at Legal Aid Alberta — one of Alberta’s top 85 employers for 2026 — check out current opportunities. Learn more about becoming a roster lawyer.