Donald Crawshaw, LLB 1982

This donor profile is from the Fall/Winter 2011 issue of Nexus.

A graduate of the Class of 1982, Donald Crawshaw left Toronto a few months after graduation to pursue an LLM at New York's Columbia University, never anticipating that he would be leaving for good. But almost three decades later, Crawshaw concedes he's a New Yorker now. He’s a partner at the international firm, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and its chief recruiter for Canada.

"I definitely think U of T is one of the top law schools in North America," he says, adding that last year, the school sent a record six summer associates to Sullivan & Cromwell's  New York offices, where they worked alongside law students and graduates from Harvard, Yale and Columbia, to name just a few. "I know that my education there was a very important part of my training."

Crawshaw is one of three partners at Sullivan & Cromwell to have graduated from U of T—a testament, he says, to the law school's excellence and stellar reputation in the international legal community. His ties to the school still run deep. Many friends and colleagues are former classmates. Some current faculty members taught him 30 years ago.

"We had a very motivated student body, and excellent professors," he recalls.

Crawshaw's education took him a long way, both literally and figuratively. His ongoing contributions, he says, are his way of keeping involved.

"The size of the school has expanded quite a bit since I was there," he says. "I was happy to support the Laskin Library when I was an associate, and I'm happy to be able to help in a more substantial way with the current building campaign."