When hiring articling lawyers, says Blair Yorke-Slader, vice chairman of Bennett Jones, which snapped Schweitzer up back then, “we are obviously looking for people who are smart. “But,” he adds, “if you’re just an academic, if you can’t look a client in the eye, that’s not really ideal.” Bennett Jones’s recruiting team was looking for candidates with communications skills and a work-life balance.
Schweitzer had those qualities. From 1999 to 2001, before studying law, he’d gone to play college baseball and get a general arts degree at Cerro Coso Community College, a small school in Ridgecrest, a city of 27,000 people, in California’s Mojave Desert. “The fact Doug had an athletic background was an indication of balance,” says Yorke-Slader. “He struck that wonderful balance between professionalism and the kind of guy you would want to go for a beer with.”
In college, Schweitzer, born in Kelowna, B.C., had a cannon for an arm. “I could throw hard, but [I] didn’t have the greatest control in the world,” he told Canadian Lawyer. “I’d walk a guy, hit a guy, strike a guy out.” Beyond his athletic qualities and legal acumen, something else made Schweitzer memorable, according to Yorke-Slader. “He has then what he has now, which is remarkable authenticity. He looks you in the eye and talks to you and you know you’re getting the straight goods.”
It’s a theme that emerged from several lawyers who worked with Schweitzer before he entered politics in 2017. That summer, Schweitzer ran and lost against Jason Kenney for the UCP leadership. But, as the UCP candidate for Calgary-Elbow in Alberta’s provincial election on April 16, Schweitzer won his seat and the UCP won a majority, sweeping the NDP out of power. He was sworn in as minister of justice and solicitor general on April 30.
Before entering politics, Schweitzer garnered plenty of goodwill in Calgary’s corporate law community in just more than a decade: He was known as an amiable, fair and bright lawyer. But as he winds up to helm Alberta’s judicial system, a question hangs over him: Can he deliver the “straight goods” to Albertans as justice minister while serious allegations of voter fraud during the UCP’s own leadership campaign dog his party and his boss, Premier Jason Kenney?