Salima Samnani, KC

Professor Samnani is a Kenyan Indo-Canadian Muslim immigrant. Her experience as a litigator and as a lecturer focuses on public law and civil law including family, child protection, and employment law. Professor Samnani’s research, areas of expertise, and advocacy focus mainly on access to justice, anti-racism, clinical legal education, and education for self-represented and underrepresented litigants. As a lecturer, she is passionate about implementing clinical legal education pedagogies that focus on trauma-informed, skills-based legal training from a feminist, anti-racist and decolonization perspective.

Professor Samnani is a lecturer and Legal Services Director at the Indigenous Community Legal Clinic, which is located in the Downtown Eastside community of Vancouver on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Professor Samnani also teaches courses in Family Law and Children and the Law.

Professor Samnani has served Indigenous communities for over a decade, first as Associate Counsel for the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry and then as counsel for the Union of BC Indian Chiefs at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Professor Samnani earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of Victoria, and a Master of Laws in Cross-Cultural Business Practices from the University of Fribourg in conjunction with the University of Bern and University of Neuchâtel. Her thesis, written for and in conjunction with the World Trade Organization and the Aga Khan Agency of Micro-finance, explored the impact of micro-finance banking under-regulation on people made vulnerable by society. 

Indigenous Community Legal Clinic