With sophisticated advisory skills and strategic guidance in disputes, Lisa is an accomplished litigator and trusted advisor to boards and companies on their most sensitive and high-profile employment matters.
- Toronto:416.865.8222
Overview
Lisa leads Torys' Employment Litigation Practice and is the co-head of the firm's Pension and Employment group. She advises companies and boards of directors on all manner of human resources issues and represents them in contentious employment matters.
As a strategic advisor with sophisticated perspective, Lisa gives comprehensive guidance to clients, often behind the scenes, on their most complex employment matters with enterprise-wide implications, such as high-profile CEO and C-suite departures and hires, policy-setting, whistleblower programs and workplace-related investigations. She also advises companies undertaking investigations and leading investigations, particularly on sensitive employment matters such as allegations of executive and employee misconduct and sexual harassment. To help proactively mitigate crisis risk, Lisa works closely with leading Canadian businesses on crisis management, response and preparedness tactics.
Lisa is a skilled litigator with deep experience in employment class actions defence. She regularly acts for Canada’s largest employers on overtime and other employment class actions, as well as in wrongful dismissal claims, bonus disputes and human rights and harassment claims. She has appeared as counsel in the Supreme Court of Canada, in all levels of court in Ontario, in the Federal Court, and before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal.
Lisa is a member of Torys’ Executive Committee.
Featured Work
Recognition and Awards
| 2021-2025 | Chambers Canada—Leading lawyer in employment and labour (Ontario) |
| 2020-2024 | Benchmark Canada: The Definitive Guide to Canada’s Leading Litigation Firms and Attorneys—Litigation Star (commercial) |
| 2021-2025 | Best Lawyers in Canada—Leading lawyer in corporate and commercial litigation |
| 2020-2023 | The Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory—Leading lawyer in labour and employment |
| 2013 | Lexpert’s Rising Stars: Leading Lawyers Under 40—One of Canada’s leading lawyers under 40 |
Insights
News
Professional Involvement
Lisa is a sought-after speaker and thought leader on all manner of issues related to employment law. She is an Adjunct Professor with the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where she teaches the law of the workplace in the Global Professional LLM program.
Lisa regularly instructs and lectures on employment law, class actions, sexual harassment and advocacy, including for The Advocates’ Society, Law Society of Upper Canada, Ontario Bar Association, the Osgoode Intensive Trial Advocacy Program and the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA).
She writes frequently on employment law and class actions and is the co-editor of the Canadian edition of Modern Trial Advocacy: Analysis & Practice (3rd Canadian edition), which is used in law schools and advocacy programs across Canada.
Lisa is a member of the Labour and Employment and Class Actions sections of the Ontario Bar Association and served on the Executive of the Labour and Employment Law Section from 2013 to 2015 and 2018 to 2019. She is also a member of CACE (Canadian Association of Counsel to Employers). Lisa is also a member of the Association of Workplace Investigators.
Further, she is the Co-Chair of the University Tribunal (Trial Division) at the University of Toronto and a member of the Board of Governors of the Sterling Hall School.
During law school, Lisa studied international and comparative law at the Universite Pantheon–Assas (Paris II) in Paris.
Education and Bar Admissions
- LLB, 1999
- University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
- BA (Honours, Class I Honours), 1996
- Queen's University
- Ontario, 2001
- Alberta, 2014
- Nova Scotia, 2015