The Leon Brothers
By Barry Leon and Jeff Leon | May 4, 2025
As a fitting finale to attending the world’s largest arbitration conference–Paris Arbitration Week 2025–we gave our support to Cure Leukaemia, the blood cancer charity, by completing the Paris Marathon on Sunday, April 13th.
Runner’s World described the 26.2-mile event and its 56,950 participants as “the largest marathon the world has ever seen”. The route, a loop from the Arc de Triomphe and back, showcases Paris’ iconic sights.
Cure Leukaemia is a UK-based charity that benefits leukemia patients around the world with cutting-edge research, including most recently, groundbreaking clinical trials representing a major step forward in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia for patients unable to tolerate traditional chemotherapy.
We chose Cure Leukaemia in solidarity with Jeff’s close friend, Sam Franklin of Birmingham, Alabama, who suffers from the condition.
“We were very honoured by Barry’s and Jeff’s undertaking,” Sam said. “I was in the hospital undergoing a stem cell transplant when the marathon took place, and I followed their progress. Their efforts inspired me even more to see this through to a successful recovery. We remain deeply grateful to them.”
And we are grateful to Sam. When the going got tough, he motivated us to continue—a formidable challenge, given that we’re both seniors whose history of running on and off for years involved only distances much shorter than the marathon in the last two decades. Although Jeff completed over 30 marathons, they all transpired before 2006. Barry’s last—and only—marathon was in 1997.
Our objective was to raise £1,000 per mile. And so we did, exceeding our target with donations from friends, colleagues and relatives that topped £26,200 (C$48,100).
More than 160 individuals from many backgrounds and countries, including fellows of the American College of Trial Lawyers (Sam and Jeff are past presidents) and members of the arbitration community, contributed sums ranging from £10 to over £1000, with Jeffrey Mandell and Kim Stewart, CEO and Founder, respectively, of Arbitration Place in Toronto, leading the way.
Our donors’ collective contribution represented more than 13% of the almost £200,000 raised by the 200 individuals who dedicated their runs to Cure Leukaemia.
This outpouring of generosity did not completely surprise us: many to whom we mentioned our participation during Paris Arbitration Week expressed an unprompted desire to contribute—a mindset that surely says something special about the international arbitration community.
Barry Leon is an arbitrator and mediator with Arbitration Place, 33 Bedford Row Chambers, and Caribbean Arbitrators, a former Presiding Judge of the British Virgin Islands Commercial Court, and a former litigation and arbitration counsel at Perley-Robertson, Hill & McDougall LLP and Torys LLP.
Jeff Leon is a past president of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He joined Arbitration Place in Toronto as an arbitrator and mediator after a 45-year career as a trial, appellate and arbitration counsel at Bennett Jones LLP and Fasken Martineau Dumoulin LLP.
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