Our core expertise is advocacy. We are trial, arbitration, and appeal lawyers who see the endgame. Our unparalleled courtroom experience allows us to spot risks and position our clients for the best possible results whether in court or in a boardroom.
Complex commercial litigation is our bread and butter. We won Benchmark Canada’s Impact Case of the Year twice. We are regularly sought by industry leaders, publicly traded and privately held corporations, as well as individuals for bet-the-company litigation and high stakes shareholder disputes. We are well known to the commercial courts and respected by our peers who practise there. At the centre of our approach is our focus on the best business outcome for every client. Our results speak for themselves.
When it comes to securities litigation, we play for both teams. We regularly prosecute complex securities cases for the Ontario Securities Commission. We also defend our clients when they face the securities regulators. We leverage our knowledge of both sides to secure the best results for our clients.
We are experts at the intersection of criminal and commercial law. Our team has a unique combination of commercial litigators and former criminal prosecutors, including our partner Andrew Max who was awarded the International Fraud Prosecutor of the Year by International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators. We investigate, prosecute, and defend complex criminal and white collar frauds. We have unearthed significant frauds by management, recovered damages as a result of a fraud that inflated the purchase price of a target company, and defended multi-billion dollar fraud allegations.
We are regularly retained by major corporations and individuals to handle urgent existential and reputational threats. The reason is our multi-disciplinary expertise in investigations, injunctions, complex commercial litigation, media relations, and criminal/fraud cases. As an independent litigation firm, we can clear conflicts, assemble a team, and respond to an emergency within hours of the first call. Where needed, we partner hand in glove with Canada’s leading reputational advisors to provide one plan to manage PR, GR, and legal risks.
With former government lawyers on our team, we know how to negotiate with and litigate against government agencies and regulators. We won against the Ontario Government when it targeted our client and excluded it from a program open to similar companies. We defeated a city determined to block a green energy project. We brought the first successful application in Ontario for medical assistance in dying.
We are experts in professional liability and regulation, working across all industries including health, securities, engineering, and accounting. We regularly defend and prosecute claims of professional negligence including having successfully defended the second largest auditors’ liability claim in Canadian history. We protect regulated professionals when their licences and livelihoods are on the line and we work for regulators to uphold the integrity of their professions and to protect the public.
Our trial expertise is our clients’ advantage when facing a class action. Increasingly in Canada, class actions do not end with a certification motion. When we defend a case, the other side knows that they face a firm with the willingness and expertise to take a case to trial and win. We have successfully defended many multi-hundred million dollar class actions against individual companies as well as claims against a proposed class of defendants.
We work for some of the world’s largest websites and tech companies because we are lawyers who understand (and love) technology. We use machine learning and artificial intelligence to find the smoking gun. We brought one of the first claims for a crypto fraud and seeking the return of crypto assets. We have helped unwind complicated online frauds.
Our expertise at the intersection of commercial, regulatory, and criminal law makes us ideally suited for significant and sensitive investigations. We conduct special board committee investigations, internal reviews, and workplace investigations. Our investigations have allayed concerns by confirming compliance and finding no wrongdoing, but they also have allowed our clients to take appropriate action after we uncovered misconduct, money laundering, and fraud.
We regularly represent and advise companies, directors, and other individuals that are the subject of private, government, or regulatory investigations. Having former criminal prosecutors on our team gives us experience working with law enforcement and spotting criminal exposure.
We do insolvency litigation when it’s not your ordinary insolvency—and we are recognized for it. We won Benchmark Canada’s Impact Case of the Year when we defended an insolvency claim against the ultimate controlling shareholders of Sears Canada. Rather than being insolvency solicitors, we are the trial lawyers retained when the temperature rises or when receivership, fraud, or injunctions enter the picture.
Appeals are one of our core strengths. Our lawyers have expertise arguing appeals across the country including at the Supreme Court of Canada. We have one of the highest concentrations of former Supreme Court of Canada and appellate clerks of any firm in Canada, giving us unique insight into how appellate judges think.
We make sure our clients are protected and that their stories stand out at commissions, inquiries, and inquests. As trial lawyers, we are always helping clients prepare to testify in courts. We bring that expertise to helping our clients prepare for commissions, inquiries, and inquests. Our lawyers have also served as commission counsel making us well-suited to a variety of roles.
HEADSPACE
We’ve seen it all.
Our trial counsel team has been there and done that. We draw from the depth and breadth of our experience to bring sound judgement and advice to every area of advocacy.