McHugh Ionico Boer LLP

About McHugh Ionico Boer LLP

McHugh Ionico Boer LLP is a business law firm based in Stoney Creek, part of Hamilton, and it also serves clients in Halton and Niagara. The practice goes back to June 1975, when law school classmates Michael McHugh, Bruce Mowat, and Abe Szpirglas opened McHugh, Mowat, Szpirglas in east Hamilton. Robert Whitmore joined as a partner in 1981, and Szpirglas left in 1986 to start a separate practice in downtown Hamilton. The firm kept adding partners over the following decades, and the name changed along with them, from McHugh Mowat Whitmore Ionico MacPherson LLP after 2002 to McHugh Whitmore LLP once it moved into its current building on Queenston Road in 2011. Michael John McHugh, Ceili Boer, and David Ionico, who had each spent years there as associates, became partners in 2018, and in 2025 the firm marked its 50th anniversary and took its present name, McHugh Ionico Boer.

The firm practices business law, real estate, land development, litigation, wills and estates, and collaborative family law. It has used a team-based structure since its earliest years, with each lawyer concentrating on specific areas so a client's file goes to whoever's practice fits the matter. Several lawyers are active in local legal and industry groups, including the Hamilton Law Association and the West End Home Builders' Association, a sign of the firm's long run serving the business community around Stoney Creek.