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Jeff believes that jails or silence do not have to be the only two options that result from harmful and violent conduct, and that moments of personal and systemic transformation, healing, and hope can emerge from the darkest of moments.

By walking this path of healing justice, Jeff acknowledges the Indigenous people, Black and POC women, queer, and trans folks, and so many more people from faith and spiritual practices around the world who have been walking this path before him—and who continue to walk this path with him.

Representing Marlee Liss, the survivor of a serious sex assault, in one of the first restorative justice processes in Toronto for a crime of this magnitude, has only strengthened his resolve in this regard. Read about this case here: How a Markham sex assault survivor found justice—and peace and you can find an updated story here. Jeff and Crown prosecutor Cara Sweeny also discuss the case on the Always On podcast.

Jeff is currently working on how to make this type of process available for anyone who has survived harm and on how to bring these processes into community organizations, workplaces, and schools. He is constantly asking the question: how can we centre the needs of the person who has been harmed without disposing of the person who caused harm?

Jeff is also a past member of the transformative justice collective at Rittenhouse: A New Vision and the advisory council for WomenattheCentrE’s transformative justice initiative.

Sobonfu Somé teaches us that conflict is the spirit of the relationship asking itself to deepen. When we are embroiled in interpersonal conflict — whether in the workplace or elsewhere — this may seem impossible to imagine. The other person is absolutely wrong—and I am absolutely right. End of story. But when we can take a moment to breathe, to pause, and to re-engage our ability to listen, we discover that there is almost always more complexity to the situation, and a possibility for reconciliation emerges.

Inspired by this perspective, Jeff’s approach to mediation does not focus only on reaching a resolution. Instead, because he believes that the parties know what is best for them, he focuses on supporting the parties to be able to listen to each other—in a way that doesn’t perpetuate the cycle of attack, counter-attack, defensiveness, and suspicion.

Jeff also mediates litigation and pre-litigation disputes through Shift Mediation with Rob Tarantino. He is a qualified mediator (Q.Med) per the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Ontario.

Relationships in all parts of our life can get stuck. We may feel apprehensive about seeing a particular colleague at work — or a particular relative at a family event. Conflict & communication coaching invites us both to discover the feelings, needs, and values that are underlying these reactions, and to develop the mindsets and skill-sets necessary to shift the relationship patterns we find ourselves in.

Jeff also works upstream of conflict and harm by facilitating organizational culture change processes, professional development seminars, workshops, and retreats focused on conflict transformation skills, mindfulness, relationship-building, and leadership development. This work focuses on transforming how we relate to ourselves and each other in the context of an inequitable system—in addition to transforming the inequitable system itself. It is crucial to tend to the entire web of relationships. Jeff makes sure to bring emotional intelligence, body-awareness, and games (!) into all of his work because this kind of work involves all aspects of our beings. 

Jeff recently brought his skill-set into the law school classroom where he continues to co-teach the Lawyering For Social Change intensive course at University of Toronto with Susan L. Brooks (Associate Dean at Drexel Kline Law School). Further, Jeff co-taught criminal law at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law. His students selected him as “practitioner of the year”. He has also served as the Externship Director and Law Clinic Academic Professor at the University of Windsor’s Faculty of Law.

Jeff also co-organizes and co-facilitates the Toronto Jam and the cross-continent Law and Social Change Jam. These jams provide a context for participants to slow down, connect with kindred spirits, and to vision how, in this moment, we can be planting the seeds for a more just future.

After having successfully defended all manner of cases during six years as a trial lawyer (from minor drug possession through to homicide), Jeff discovered his passion for appeals in 2018.

The majority of Jeff’s clients are marginalized due to poverty, mental health differences, and racism. He chooses to work with these clients because, in his view, the criminal justice system perpetuates systemic inequalities, and choosing to defend this community of people is one small way to lessen the impact of structural injustices.

Jeff continues to have success at the appellate level—read about one such case here: The proof was on his phone the whole time. The story of one Toronto man’s wrongful conviction.

(For a long-form podcast biography, check out Jeff on Adaptagen.)

Jeff graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School in 2011 and was awarded the gold medal for achieving the highest academic standing in his graduating class. Jeff then clerked at the Ontario Court of Appeal for Justices Doherty, Feldman, and Pepall. He also graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Restorative Justice Certificate program and has received the designation of Qualified Mediator (Q.Med) from the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Ontario.

By way of background, in 2012, Jeff started his own criminal defence practice. His inspiration came from a short stint of incarceration during the G8/G20 protests in Toronto in 2010. After only briefly experiencing the dehumanizing experience of being locked in a cage, Jeff knew that incarceration is not an answer to harmful behaviour (and certainly cannot be the only one). He went on to spend five years doing front-line criminal defence work exclusively for indigent people impacted by interlocking systems of oppression such as racism and ableism.

In 2017, Jeff decided that he wanted to do more than mitigate the harm of the criminal justice system, case-by-case. From what he’s seen, the adversarial nature of the criminal justice process only deepens the disconnection, harm, and trauma caused by the original incident for all involved—and fails to take into account all of the moments of past harm and trauma sitting in the background. It is a system of punishment and not one of accountability.

Stepping back, Jeff realized that restorative and transformative justice sat at the intersection of his work as a criminal lawyer and the separate road he had been walking as a facilitator dedicated to supporting community groups and other organizations with relationship-building, conflict transformation skills, visioning, and leadership development for more than 15 years.

Stepping further back, Jeff became aware of the presence of this adversarial model everywhere. In schools and workplaces, the dominant way of responding to conflict and harm is to engage an adversarial process with the sole goal of determining whether or not to punish. Inspired by the vision that another path is possible, Jeff began expanding his practice into the healing justice and mediation realms.

When not reflecting on conflict, harm, and relationships, Jeff tries to see the world through the eyes of his little kiddos, works on his amateur guitar-playing, and reads books. His favourites right now are: Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm by Kazu Haga; Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown; Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair by Danielle Sered; and Challenging Conflict: Mediation Through Understanding by Gary Friedman.