Supervising Lawyers

Asiya practices in all areas of Canadian immigration law with a particular focus on litigation. She appears before all levels of the Immigration and Refugee Board, as well as the Federal Court and has argued before the Federal Court of Appeal. Asiya also regularly assists clients with temporary resident permits, pre-removal risk assessments and humanitarian and compassionate applications. Asiya is committed to justice for low-income individuals, to public legal information and access to quality legal representation. She was called to the Ontario Bar in 2009.

Jennifer attended Osgoode Hall Law School where she was a student at Parkdale Community Legal Services and Wilson Mooting Champion. Jennifer articled for the Canadian Autoworkers Unions and Ursel Phillps Fellows Hopkinson. Following her call to the bar in 2008, Jennifer practiced labour law at arbitration tribunals for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union before joining DLS in 2016. She a former board member of METRAC and current president of the Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education.

Philippa earned her law degree at the University of Toronto but learned to be a lawyer at Downtown Legal Services. She articled with the Office of the Children's Lawyer, was called to the bar in 2010, and served as in-house counsel for the Children's Lawyer before moving to private practice at litigation boutique Phillips Gill as a Children's Lawyer panel agent. In 2011, she joined the Public Guardian and Trustee, first as litigation counsel and then as client and investigations counsel, providing a wide range of legal services to Ontarians experiencing cognitive impairment. She returned to Downtown Legal Services in 2022, first supervising the Housing division and then launching the Disability, Health, and Income Security division in 2024. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly.

Prasanna Balasundaram holds an impassioned belief, founded on his own lived experiences, in the transformative power of meaningful access to justice. Throughout his legal career, he has striven to advance the rights of marginalized peoples, including refugees and immigrants, racialized communities, women facing gender-based persecution, and LGBT+ individuals.

His legal practice focusses primarily on complex immigration and refugee law, particularly those involving constitutional law, exclusion, inadmissibility and national security issues. His work has encompassed both advocacy for the rights of refugees on a large scale, with constitutional challenges to the Designated Country of Origin regime and the Safe Third Country Agreement, and fighting for individuals, as exemplified by his work to reunite vindicated Guantanamo Bay detainees with their Canadian families.

Prasanna is also a dedicated advocate of the community legal clinic system and its importance in ensuring access to legal services for some of the most marginalized members of Canadian society. He has held leadership roles with the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, Alliance for South Asian Aids Prevention, and the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario. In 2021, he was awarded the Law Foundation of Ontario’s Community Leadership in Justice Fellowship for his work aimed at creating a lasting legacy of access to justice, and the Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education’s Cirillo Award for making a significant contribution to the life of Downtown Legal Services.

As director, Prasanna seeks to strengthen and promote the clinic’s role as a vehicle for justice, while offering student caseworkers a rich, dynamic, and transformative learning experience.

Richard Teicher, B.A. (Hons.) (York University), M.S.W. (University of Toronto), LL.B. (University of Windsor), LL.M. (University of Ottawa), supervises the Family Law Division.  Richard has practiced exclusively family law since being called to the Bar of Ontario in 2000. Richard has litigated matters in the Ontario and Superior Courts of Justice.  He is an accredited family law mediator (Acc.F.M.) and a qualified collaborative family law lawyer. Richard has been panel counsel for the Ontario Children’s Lawyer – Personal Rights Section and the Family Responsibility Office.  Richard has been sessional faculty with the Humber College Business School and Riverdale Mediation. During his career, Richard has practiced with a large Bay Street firm, a boutique family law firm and has run his own private practice. In 2018, Richard was selected to be a member of the Dispute Resolution Officer (DRO) Panel for the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto

Seema earned her LLB at the University of Bristol, and LLM in International Development Law and Human Rights at the University of Warwick, both in the United Kingdom. Seema has an international background and has worked on women’s rights issues in Jordan and with the Human Rights Council at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. After moving to Toronto in 2015, she worked on refugee and immigration issues and practiced housing law within Ontario’s community clinic system, serving some of Toronto’s most vulnerable during the intensifying housing crises. In her recent role at the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR), Seema focused on advocating for the right to housing through policy and law reform and worked on legal and policy submissions to various levels of government and international bodies, as well as other community initiatives. Seema is excited to bring her diverse experience to DLS.

Sukhpreet earned her J.D. at Osgoode Hall and her B.A. (English and Theatre) at the University of Waterloo. Sukhpreet began her legal career in 2014 as a trial lawyer with a leading criminal defence firm in Toronto. She has appeared before numerous administrative tribunals, all levels of court in Ontario, the Federal Court, and the Supreme Court of Canada. Sukhpreet also holds expertise in public legal education and law reform advocacy, developed through roles at the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario, Law in Action Within Schools, and the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund. Sukhpreet is equally passionate about art and remains active as a theatre practitioner.