Awards highlight Western Law’s leadership in insolvency education

September 08, 2016

Two recent Western Law grads have won second and third place prizes in the 2016 Insolvency Institute of Canada (IIC) Writing Awards Program.

The IIC’s awards program gives law students the opportunity to research insolvency issues, develop ideas, and bring proposals for reform to the attention of the business and legal community.

Matt Aleksic JD’16 won second place and received a $5,000 prize for his Paper “The Interest Stops Rule: Is Nortel the Last Word?”

Michael Barrett JD’16 placed third and secured a prize of $2,500 for his paper “Substantive Consolidation After Nortel: The Treatment of Corporate Groups in Canadian Insolvency Law”.

The students wrote the papers for the Advanced Restructuring and Insolvency Law course at Western Law this past year.

Western Law adjunct professor Chris Armstrong, a partner in the Corporate Restructuring Group at Goodmans LLP, supervised the papers.

“IIC is the premier insolvency paper writing competition in Canada and the awards for Michael and Matt, following on the first place award for Mitch Grossell last year and a number of awards in prior years, shows Western Law’s continuing leadership in commercial insolvency and restructuring education,” said Armstrong.

The IIC Law Student Writing Awards Program is an annual competition open to all full-time undergraduate students in Canadian law schools. The purpose of program is to stimulate interest among law students in the research and development of papers based on corporate insolvency and restructuring topics and to recognize outstanding achievement in this endeavour.