A performer in law

By the time Kyle Bienvenu graduated high school in Victoria, B.C., he knew exactly what he wanted to do next because it had always been part of him. He wanted to be an artist.

“I love performing, I love being in front of people,” the professionally trained dancer explains. “I love the work it takes to get to that point.”

Today, as a partner at Hira Rowan LLP in Vancouver and as this year’s winner of the CBA’s Douglas Miller Rising Star Award, he uses those same words to describe the feeling he gets practising as a litigator in commercial and construction law.

“Those butterflies that happen just before you step on stage or you step into a courtroom, the feelings are very, very similar – with just a different costume on most of the time,” he says.

After dancing professionally for a few years, Bienvenu set his sights on a career that could offer him financial stability that the arts could not.

In 2002, he enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces. Over the next 12 years, he would serve as a Naval Combat Information Operator and be honoured with the Canadian Forces Decoration for his services. Still, he knew early on that he wanted to go back to school. So, two years after joining the Navy Reserve, he enrolled at the University of Victoria and remained in the Forces during his studies.

In his third year of undergrad, a pattern emerged. Most of the classes he was taking purely out of interest happened to relate to the field of law.

His wife suggested he take the LSAT, and he surprised even himself with an impressive score — good enough to get him into the University of Victoria School of Law. That’s where he says he fell in love with what being a lawyer is all about.

“What attracted me was I liked the black letter of it,” Bienvenu, who was called to the Bar in 2013, explains. He says he liked seeing “there's black, white and a whole bunch of gray. I really like that gray.”

The founding partner of Hira Rowan LLP, Mark Rowan, nominated Bienvenu for the award because of the youthful and enthusiastic energy he has brought to the firm since 2016. “He knew exactly what he was bringing to the firm even though he was very new,” Rowan says. “He wasn’t afraid.” To Rowan, Bienvenu is the person in the office that bridges the gap between the older and newer members of the team with his willingness to try anything.

Bienvenu even helps upcoming lawyers by putting on seminars on basic legal practices like memo-writing to law students and junior lawyers starting at Hira Rowan LLP and other firms.

If you ask Bienvenu, he credits the opportunities he’s had so early in his career to his ambitious networking. He says much of what led him to becoming an influential member of his firm and the CBA is because he’s unafraid to walk into the right rooms to meet the right people. That, and sandwiches.

During law school, he was passing by the University of Victoria student lounge one day, hungry. There happened to be an empty classroom nearby with students who told him he could have a free sandwich if he joined the Canadian Bar Association. “That’s good enough for me,” he replied.

He’s been a member since and has served as vice-chair of the CBA British Columbia Branch’s Construction Law Sub-Section and as an elected representative to Provincial Council of the BC Branch.

Much of what continues to drive him toward a promising career in law comes from a common lesson he found in two completely different worlds — dance and the army. For Bienvenu, a career in law is about recognizing the importance of the team that surrounds him, allowing him to shine, like a dancer being trusted with a solo.

“Each performer will be judged on how they perform that night,” he says. “But if you aren’t part of a larger group working together to make those individual performances better, you’re missing out. So, I hope I’m not alone in saying that the practice of law is not an individual sport.”