Shawn Douglas is a Canadian lawyer and partner at Weir & Foulds, a Toronto law firm founded in 1860. He earned a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Alberta in 1980 and a Bachelor of Laws at Osgoode Hall Law School, and was admitted to the Ontario bar in 1987.
Background
Shawn Douglas's documented education began in western Canada at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, the provincial capital, where he took a Bachelor of Arts in 1980. The university was founded in 1908 as the first university in Alberta, and it has since grown into one of the province's principal centers of higher learning.
He later pursued legal training in Toronto at Osgoode Hall Law School, the institution through which Ontario's legal profession has long been educated.
Education
Douglas received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Alberta in 1980. The university opened in Edmonton in 1908, making it the first university established in Alberta.
Douglas also studied at Osgoode Hall Law School, where he received a Bachelor of Laws. The Law Society of Upper Canada permanently established the school in 1889 on the Osgoode Hall site in Toronto, and it was the only law school in Ontario until the University of Toronto Faculty of Law opened in 1949. The school affiliated with York University in the 1960s and relocated to York's Keele Campus in 1968.
Career
Douglas was admitted to the bar in Ontario in 1987, and his documented professional career is associated with the Toronto firm Weir & Foulds. Admission to practice in Ontario was then administered by the Law Society of Upper Canada, which controlled entry to the profession through its exclusive jurisdiction over legal education until 1957. The society remained the licensing body for Ontario lawyers after the law school moved to York University, and it was renamed the Law Society of Ontario in 2018.
Douglas is documented as a partner at Weir & Foulds. The firm traces its origins to 1860 and is today known as WeirFoulds LLP, a Toronto practice focused on litigation, corporate, property and government law. Its earlier name, Mason, Foulds, reflects the firm's history as a partnership in Toronto's legal community.
