Sinha helps organizations navigate new and unexpected scenarios, carving out legal space where there may not be precedents. In 2023, Canadian Lawyer named him one of the top 25 most influential lawyers in the country.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, he advised governments and corporations on how to respond, as well as helped sports teams and casinos coordinate shutdowns and re-openings. He’s provided advice on the legalization of cannabis, and regulation of new dental plans. His expertise in political law makes him the go-to for corporations and political actors on conflicts of interest, ethics, lobbying and elections law.
And if an entity wants to engage in something like cryptocurrency, or take a public stance on a political issue that poses a media risk, he’ll weigh in.
“I’m naturally drawn to unsolved problems,” Sinha says.
If you look at law as the operating instructions for a tribe as it grows, when new needs arise, legal lacunae open. Sinha approaches these gaps as “how an ecologist might be excited to find a new species.”
Sinha attributes his capacity for holding many perspectives at once to his bijural training at McGill in the ’90s, with its emphasis on political, moral, and societal underpinnings. “It was a great environment to think and be challenged with ideas,” he says. “And an absolutely beautiful mélange of people from different backgrounds, different cultures, different educational paths, and with different anticipated careers,” the Hindu Newfoundlander adds.
He was part of the first class of students to be recruited by New York firms, and landed at Paul, Weiss, gaining great experience. But the NYC lifestyle wasn’t the right fit for Sinha and his now-wife. “Being on the Upper East Side arguing with people about where to find the best risotto didn’t feel like us,” he jokes. So, 23 years ago, they chose Bay Street over Wall Street.
He and his wife, an executive at an insurance company, lead busy lives. When their kids were young, Sinha was aware that if he left work at 6 to relieve the nanny, it’d be assumed he was going to another meeting – or that if he were upfront about his family commitments, he’d be lauded in ways his wife might not have been. “That’s ridiculous! Because she’s probably contributing more than me at the office and at home, but gets no bonus points for it,” he notes.
While the balance is a challenge, Sinha wants to fully embrace “every lovely scrumptious aspect” of family life while serving his clients, being a good friend, finding interesting new things, learning from the world. “How can I make it so that all of these are not independent stones, but colours on a palette? I’m trying to live a life, not go through tasks.”
In the early days of his career, he didn’t want to draw attention to how he was usually the only Brown person in the room. “You could barely make a soccer team out of the Brown partners on Bay Street,” he says. But a colleague urged him to step up. Today, he serves as McCarthy Tétrault’s ambassador to Legal Leaders in Diversity, and is a sought-after voice for diversity in the business community.
Not only is a diverse staff more productive, innovative, and creative; it’s also a sign of a well-functioning office that hires for talent and eschews the risk of groupthink, Sinha stresses. He likens its importance to how special powers are found anywhere in the X-Men universe. “Our profession requires people who can do a very peculiar job,” he says. “You’re looking for the people who crave it, and are good at it, and can engage with it in the way that makes it great. If you put unnecessary, irrelevant characteristics in front of your perception of who’s going to be good at the job? If you need a team of heroes and you only look for heroic types, you’re going to miss Wolverine, up north in a Canadian mining town. You’re going to miss Nightcrawler because he’s a street urchin in Germany.”
Within the organized chaos and fast decisions of his office’s legal dealings, Sinha tries his best to mentor junior lawyers so they mature as problem solvers. He has great faith in the younger generation to lead us towards ever more progressive ways. “I’ve got a pet theory that my kids’ generation is just going to straighten things out,” he says. For them, climate change and gender equality aren’t debatable.
“Corporations will have to be good citizens and show moral corporate character, just to keep competitive.”
“I really do believe the universe arcs towards justice and, in the end, don’t bet against rationality,” Sinha says. “My highest professional obligation is the execution of the law. And I have faith that if you support that system, then that system creates a backbone for a moral and just society.”
