Kenda Murphy has over 25 years of legal experience and currently holds calls to the Law Society of Ontario and Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society. Her long legal career includes appearances before all levels of courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, and various administrative tribunals.
Believing that it was important to become skilled in multiple areas of the law, Kenda embarked upon a professional journey that saw her hone her litigation skills in a general litigation practition in her early career. This required that she become conversant in employment, family, insurance, and criminal law. Juggling a multifaceted caseload ensured that she stayed current in the law and could move seamlessly from topic to topic when appearing in court or serving her clients’ legal needs.
Ultimately, labour and employment law captured her interest and it is where Kenda has predominantly focused her practice since 2003. Working for public and para-public sector employers, Kenda has had the privilege of representing her clients in complex, multi-day arbitration hearings and multi-employer/multi-union collective bargaining negotiations while maintaining her day to day practice of providing legal advice to both large and small clients.
Kenda had been widely lauded for her client relationship focus and views relationship building as one of the most important aspects of service delivery. Understanding the client’s goals and objectives affords her the opportunity to tailor options for outcomes that will be of greatest benefit to the client. In managing client expectations, Kenda does not shy away from difficult discussions with her clients and others who may be involved in the decision making respecting processes and outcomes.
Over the last number of years, Kenda’s legal work has encompassed workplace investigations, training, and mediations. Kenda strongly believes that organizations want to “do the right thing” but often find that they have to respond to complaints because they did not have the appropriate information to allow them to address a matter before it rose to the level of a complaint. In that regard, she views workplace investigations as the opportunity to determine whether there is an issue, the extent of the issue, and how that issue might best be resolved.
Kenda’s approach to training is that it is informative and fun. Based on an adult learning model, she conducts her training sessions from the perspective of delivering information that is easily understood by participants and encouraging questions relative to the training materials and real work situations that participants have encountered. Kenda has delivered varied training sessions which include: conducting workplace investigations and the mechanics of report writing; conducting sexual violence and sexual harassment investigations; investigating in the university context; discipline and discharge; sick leave management; performance management; and managing in a unionized environment.
Understanding that there is seldom a single reason or issue that gives rise to workplace conflict, Kenda conducts mediations to assist parties to resolve their concerns before a complaint is made as well as a means of workplace restoration subsequent to an investigation. Approaching the mediation process from a party centered perspective, Kenda is either more or less interventionist depending upon each party’s wants and needs for the process and its outcomes.