We provide the following types of legal services:

• General legal counsel, including general advice and litigation
• Legislative drafting and drafting of bylaws and regulations
• Advice and representation relating to Self-governing Professions
• Advice to and representation of Independent Boards and Tribunals
• Mediation, Arbitration, and Adjudication

Merrilee Rasmussen is a member of the Law Society of Saskatchewan (1976) and the Law Society of Nunavut (2004). She practices primarily in the areas of Aboriginal law, administrative law, constitutional law, labour and employment, and municipal law.

She has a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Regina. Her M.A. thesis, The Decline of Parliamentary Democracy in Saskatchewan, was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal in 1995. She has an LL.B. and LL.M. from the University of Saskatchewan. Her Master’s Thesis in Law was titled Prairie First Nations and Provinces: Is There a Fiduciary Relationship That Gives Rise to Fiduciary Obligations?
Merrilee was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1996.

Prior to moving to private practice in 1988, Merrilee served as Legislative Counsel and Law Clerk for the Saskatchewan Legislature for more than a decade. She is a member of the Canadian Bar Association and has served as Chair of the Legislation and Law Reform (South) Section of the Saskatchewan Branch. Merrilee has been a sessional lecturer in Political Science and Human Justice at the University of Regina and at the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan in the area of legislation and legislative drafting. She served as Chair of the Saskatchewan Law Reform Commission from 2000 to 2008 and Chair of the Saskatchewan Archives Board from 2005 to 2009.

Merrilee was a constitutional advisor to Saskatchewan on Aboriginal issues during the 1992 constitutional negotiations that developed the Charlottetown Accord, and continued to advise the province’s departments dealing with intergovernmental and Aboriginal affairs from 1992 to 1995. She was also the province’s representative on the drafting team that produced the Agreement on Internal Trade in 1994.

From 2000 to 2003, Merrilee worked extensively for the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (now the Federation of Sovereign Indian Nations) on a number of matters, but most importantly on the Treaty-based self-government negotiations between the FSIN, Canada and Saskatchewan. She has also advised a number of individual First Nations in the province on a variety of issues. She is currently working with the Métis Nation – Saskatchewan to draft constitutional and legislative changes necessary to fully implement Métis self-government in accordance with the framework agreement signed with Canada initially in 2019 and updated in 2023.

Merrilee has served as an arbitrator on numerous occasions and on human rights adjudications. Between 2006 and 2017 she served as an adjudicator of residential school claims in the process established in the class action settlement approved by the courts in jurisdictions across Canada. She heard in excess of 500 such claims as an adjudicator in that process.

Since 2003, Merrilee has provided independent legal advice to the Nunavut Liquor Licensing Board, now the Liquor and Cannabis Board. Since 2016 she has provided legal advice to the Nunavut Labour Standards Board and has acted as legal counsel for the Office of the Nunavut Public Guardian and the Office of the Nunavut Public Trustee. In that regard she has made several hundred applications to the Nunavut Court of Justice sitting in Iqaluit and in many communities throughout Nunavut. In the last few years she has been assisting the Law Society of Nunavut in drafting amendments to the Law Society Rules and preparing proposed amendments to the Nunavut Legal Profession Act.

Merrilee has appeared before a number of administrative tribunals and in all levels of court in Saskatchewan, as well as in the Nunavut Court of Justice, the Nunavut Court of Appeal, the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.

Colin Rasmussen is a member of the Law Society of Saskatchewan (2004) and the California State Bar (2008). He is also a registered U.S. Patent Attorney. His practice areas include intellectual property, business corporations, administrative law, municipal law, and labour and employment. He is physically located in California, but technology allows him to work with the Saskatchewan-based team. He has experience in conservatorship and guardianship law in California and that experience together with his technical and medical knowledge has been particularly valuable to the firm in preparing documents for guardianship applications in Nunavut.

Colin originally started in the biological sciences, obtaining a B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University of British Columbia. Colin completed his Ph.D. at Baylor College of Medicine (Texas Medical Center - Houston TX). After post-doctoral training in the U.S. he joined the faculty of the Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology at the University of Alberta from 1991 to 1997, where he eventually became Director of the National Cancer Institute Molecular Mechanisms of Growth Control Group. Colin later moved to the Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology at the University of Saskatchewan.

Colin’s research was in the area of intracellular signal transduction. His research expertise includes molecular and cellular biology, biochemistry, genetics, and immunology, and he has authored over 20 peer-reviewed research articles.

After graduating from the University of Saskatchewan College of Law in 2003, he articled and was an Associate with the Regina intellectual property firm of Furman & Kallio. Colin also worked as an Associate in the intellectual property group at Bennett Jones in Calgary and was later a scientific advisor in the Intellectual Property & Media Group of McDermott Will & Emery in Irvine, California.

Colin is also CEO of LLVARE, a non-profit corporation that supports research efforts at the Loma Linda VA Hospital.

Zena Charowsky is a member of the Law Society of Saskatchewan (2004) and the Law Society of Nunavut (2017). Her preferred areas of practice include legal research and writing, Aboriginal law, and administrative law.

Zena has a B.A. with Great Distinction from the University of Regina majoring in linguistics and an LL.B. with Distinction from the University of Saskatchewan. She went on to complete an LL.M. at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., receiving a Law Society of Saskatchewan scholarship to do so. Her LL.M. thesis was entitled Culture Shock: The Intersection of Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Notions of Justice in Canadian Criminal Law.

In her practice, Zena has worked with individual First Nations assisting in the research and preparation of briefs of law on significant constitutional issues, at all levels of court including the Supreme Court of Canada, particularly in relation to the duty to consult.

In the administrative law area, she has worked mainly with self-governing professions in several capacities, including providing general legal advice, prosecuting discipline offences, providing advice to discipline committees and assisting with the preparation of their written decisions. She has also worked with several municipalities in drafting bylaws on a number of topics.

Since her admission to the Law Society of Nunavut she has been instrumental in the preparation of court documents on behalf of the Nunavut Office of the Public Guardian. She is also working with the Law Society of Nunavut as a project manager and advisor in the development of several policy documents.

Jaime Carlson is a member of the Law Society of Saskatchewan (2003) and the Law Society of the Northwest Territories (2021). She practices primarily in the areas of Aboriginal Law and Administrative Law. The latter includes labour and employment law work, human rights disputes, judicial review applications and statutory appeal processes, self-governing professions, immigration work and work with municipalities.

Jaime obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree with great distinction from the University of Regina in 1999 and then attended the University of Toronto to obtain her Bachelor of Laws degree in 2002.

Jaime clerked at the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal under Justice Tallis and Justice Cameron. She worked in private practice until 2007 when she joined the office of Ombudsman Saskatchewan and the Office of the Public Interest Disclosure Commissioner, where she worked for a decade. For much of that time Jaime was the primary investigator involved in the systemic reviews conducted by that office, contributing to several public reports issued by the Ombudsman in relation to administrative law issues. She also co-wrote an article published in the Saskatchewan Law Review titled "On the Road to Fairness: Redesigning Saskatchewan's Administrative Tribunal System".

While at Ombudsman Saskatchewan, Jaime regularly facilitated workshops on the Fine Art of Fairness and assisted the office in updating the training materials for this workshop. In addition, Jaime did other training for the office on investigations, providing procedural fairness, on matters under the Public Interest Disclosure mandate, and on the cooperative model of influence.

Jaime has extensive experience in reviewing and interpreting legislation and has appeared in and argued before Courts in Saskatchewan including the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal and before many different administrative tribunals.