Louis Frapporti

About Louis Frapporti

Louis Frapporti is a partner in Gowling WLG's Hamilton office, and business leaders, boards and institutions bring the work to Frapporti when they've reached a turning point, whether it's growth, a restructuring, a governance question or public engagement. What clients often want is someone who can weigh legal, commercial, political and reputational factors at once and turn them into clear advice. The practice runs across Hamilton and Toronto, mixing commercial litigation with strategic advisory work and the leadership of client mandates.

Frapporti was called to the Ontario Bar in 1992 and then spent two years clerking for the Chief Justice of Ontario. A long run as a commercial litigator followed, and later came four years as Managing Partner of the Hamilton office. In that stretch the office grew by roughly 40 per cent and joined forces with Hamilton's Evans Sweeny Bordin LLP in January 2019, while ties to McMaster University deepened. More recent work has reached Mohawk College and other post-secondary schools too. Frapporti also sits on the board of Alinea Land Corporation as a director and strategic adviser.

Hamilton's downtown is a cause close to Frapporti's heart. There's been a visible role in the city's renewal push, including support for the TD Coliseum project and a broader plan for a core built around arts, culture and live entertainment, plus strategic counsel to HUPEG on the downtown entertainment precinct. Frapporti chaired the Hamilton 100 Commonwealth Games bid, hosts Mavericks on Cable 14 Hamilton, and is often heard in regional media on economic development and the private sector's part in building resilient cities.

Access to justice gets the same energy. As chair of the OBA Pro Bono Committee, Frapporti brought the Paladin platform for managing pro bono work into Canada and asked the Ontario Bar Association to lead its rollout, which earned the OBA's David Scott, QC Award for Pro Bono Law in 2025. Frapporti also founded the Commercial Litigation Review, a national periodical from Butterworth Canada, edited it for many years, and chaired its yearly national conference.