Edward L. Greenspan

High-profile lawyer Edward L. Greenspan is a senior partner in the Toronto law firm, Greenspan Partners. After undergraduate studies at UC, he earned a law degree at Osgoode Hall and began his practice in 1970, receiving his Queen’s counsel designation in 1982. While he is best known for defending people charged with criminal offences, he also acts in Securities Act investigations and prosecutions, income tax investigations, coroners’ inquests and defends people charged under the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Environmental Protection Act. He taught criminal law at U of T’s Faculty of Law for 28 years and for 18 years at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.

Greenspan has been a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association since 1981 and has served as a vice-president since 1989. He has been a board member of the Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation since 1988 and a member of ORT Canada (Toronto chapter) since 1996. Since 2002, he has been a member of the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee.

Greenspan was awarded the G. Arthur Martin Medal for outstanding contribution to Canadian criminal law in 2001. He was the recipient of the Maurice Coady Prize at U of T in 1965, and was awarded the Canada 125 Medal in 1992, as well as the Advocates’ Society Medal in 2009. He holds four honorary doctorates and this year, he was awarded the Law Society Medal, the highest honour that can be bestowed upon an Ontario lawyer.