Allard Law professor Adam Hofri-Winogradow on BC’s largest-ever trust law conference – and why you should attend

From April 5-7, the Peter A. Allard School of Law will host the largest conference on trust law ever held in British Columbia. 

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws: The Conference will bring together speakers from more than 10 legal jurisdictions around the world. The conference aims to offer guidance and practical solutions for professionals, as well as insight into emerging trends. 

Allard Law professor and trust law expert Dr. Adam Hofri-Winogradow took the time to discuss the conference, what attendees can look forward to, and why Allard students will want to attend.

Who is this conference for? And what can they expect to take away from it?

The conference will be of great interest to lawyers concerned with property law, succession, trusts, charities, finance and estate planning, legal scholars interested in these fields, non-lawyers concerned with trusts such as bankers, trustees, trust company personnel and investment advisors, law students, scholars of inequality, scholars of the family, and historians. 

Attendees will gain a clear picture of how trusts are used around the world, how the law of trusts is developing in the world’s leading trusts jurisdictions, how trusts-adjacent issues such as choice of law for trusts and trusts taxation are currently handled in many jurisdictions, and how the law got this way. 

Which speakers are you particularly looking forward to hearing? 

It’s hard to choose among such an all-star list of trusts experts from everywhere. I would highlight Dr. Brooke Harrington, perhaps the greatest sociologist ever to address trusts practice; Dr. Katerina Ronovska, recently appointed Vice President of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic; and Dr. Mark Brabazon, who recently authored a new book providing a detailed analysis of the international taxation of trust income.  Dr Brabazon has mastered comparative trusts taxation, perhaps the hardest topic in the law. 

In your talk on the second day of the conference, you’ll be discussing offshore “firewalls.” What are offshore firewalls and why is this an important issue?

Offshore firewalls are legal norms, generally statutory, enacted in offshore jurisdictions, that make a trust subject to the law of those jurisdictions immune to rights and claims made against it under the laws of outside jurisdictions. 

Firewalls are a key plank in the offshore offering: they offer the hope that if courts outside the firewall jurisdiction rule against trust parties, those judgments will be effectively unenforceable, so long as the trust is controlled exclusively by persons or entities within the firewall jurisdiction. Firewalls are a key way to render rights and judgments unenforceable in practice.

This conference is free for current Allard Law students. What will students in particular get out of this conference?

Students will get exposed to a stellar gallery of legal experts from around the world and to a live demonstration of how a series of legal issues are addressed in 30 different jurisdictions. They will also have the chance to learn about some of the most cutting-edge, controversial issues in legal practice. Exposure to this conference will be an obvious advantage for students thinking of a career in the private client or trusts and estates industry.

Register Now

Registration is open for the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws: The Conference. The conference is eligible for up to 22.5 CPD credits. 

Learn more and register