Our Team
Garage Legal is an initiative set up by a group of law students at the Université de Montréal, overseen by Professor Stéphane Rousseau as part of a Bachelor of Law course. Since 2018, Garage Legal has been supervised by Gilles de Saint-Exupéry. On March 26, 2020, the legal clinic was transformed into a non-profit organization under the leadership of Gilles and former students, Mariya Voloshyn, Andrew Galliano and Marc Obeid. This new structure aims to ensure the sustainability of Legal Garage and a better fulfillment of its mission. A restructuring of the clinic’s activities will follow, which will attract new student volunteers who will contribute to the diversification of the clinic’s activities, thus meeting the ever-growing needs of the entrepreneurial clientele.
Gilles de Saint-Exupéry
Gilles de Saint-Exupéry
Gilles is the president and co-founder of The legal Clinic Garage Legal. He has been a member of the Québec Bar since 2014. He supervises the course component of the legal clinic Garage Légal at the Faculty of Law of Université de Montréal and is the co-founder of Lexstart, an innovative legal platform for entrepreneurs. Gilles is on the board of directors of SAJE Montréal and the committee of faculty representatives of the Millenium Quebecor Project. In 2021, he was the recipient of the Excellence in Educational Innovation Award.
Mariya Voloshyn
Mariya has been a member of the Québec Bar since 2022 and is a Business Lawyer at McCarthy Tétrault. She is the co-founder of Garage Legal as well as the head of the marketing and communications department. This role allows her to promote the legal clinic within the Quebec entrepreneurial community as well as students interested in business law.
Her proximity to the business community and understanding of business law allows her to develop clear and relevant content for local entrepreneurs.
During her law studies, she established the Revue juridique étudiante de l’Université de Montréal, a non-profit organization that promotes research and legal writing among law students. Before starting her legal career, Mariya obtained a Bachelor of Arts with a specialization in economics and international development from McGill university.
Mélanie Ruiz-Pardo
Melanie is a real estate and financing lawyer at Cain Lamarre. She got involved at Garage Legal first as a content manager and then as a board director. She developed a particular attraction for entrepreneurship during her master’s degree in business Law. Mélanie’s goal is to raise awareness regarding the legal challenges of entrepreneurship.
Carolane Rebelo
During her law studies at Université de Montréal, Carolane worked in several organizations whose mission was to promote access to justice. Being able to merge the concepts she learned in business law courses with her interest in entrepreneurship is what led her to get involved at Garage Légal. She conducted multiple meetings with entrepreneurs and conducted legal research to answer their questions. She now holds the position of legal content administrator while she’s completing her studies for the Bar exam. Her mission is now to build a legal library adapted to current entrepreneurs’ needs for better access to legal information.
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Elena Scaini
While completing her law degree and her juris doctor in common law, Elena worked as a law student in business and as an assistant in philanthropic activities within a private foundation supporting, among other things, several entrepreneurial initiatives. Her involvement as a member of Garage Légal allows her to combine her interests in both law and entrepreneurship. While in the process of completing her internship for the Bar within a large-scale corporate litigation firm, she uses her research, writing and communication skills to support drafting client notes and the legal library project.
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