Contact: Minerva Cernea
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15
Feb
2018
Toronto - Forest Hill
Living Life On The Avenue Road
1066 Avenue Road
Toronto, ON  M5N 0A3
Canada

Susan E. Opler, B.A. McGill University (1982) and LL.B. University of Toronto (1985), was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1987.   

Ms. Opler practised litigation for many years as an associate and later as a partner at McCarthy Tétrault. She also worked for a year prosecuting criminal cases as an Assistant Crown Attorney while on leave from the firm.

Since 2001, she has been an adjudicator on the Consent and Capacity Board (CCB) and since 2005, a Vice Chair and Senior Lawyer Member. In her work for the CCB, Ms. Opler has conducted quasi-judicial hearings on issues of mental health, capacity and substitute decision-making. She played a key leadership role in the overall administration of the CCB, including in process design, training and evaluation of members and outreach to the community. 

Since 2013, Ms. Opler has also served as an appointed adjudicator member of the Law Society Tribunal, where she presided over professional misconduct, incapacity and registration hearings concerning lawyers and paralegals, sitting in both the Hearings and Appeal divisions.

Ms. Opler is a trained and experienced mediator and has used mediation throughout her legal career. Most recently, her mediation skills have played a critical role in a significant reduction in the number of hearing days at the Law Society Tribunal.

As a recognized expert in teaching adjudication skills, Ms. Opler has served for many years as a lead instructor with the Society of Ontario Adjudicators and Regulators (SOAR) and with Osgoode Professional Development (OPD). She has taught adjudicators, justices of the peace, judges and other decision-makers throughout Canada and internationally.

Ms. Opler sat on the Board of Directors of the University of Toronto Schools and as a member of the Research Ethics Board of The Hospital for Sick Children.

Ms. Opler was proud to be the 2014 recipient of the Laura Legge Award, an honour with which the Law Society of Upper Canada recognizes “a woman lawyer in Ontario who has exemplified leadership within the profession."