Shearer Parnega LLP

About Shearer Parnega LLP

Shearer Parnega LLP is a two lawyer firm based in Toronto that focuses on workplace investigations, mediation, workplace restoration and coaching, and training for employers. Founding partners Gillian Shearer and Jan Parnega bring, by the firm's own account, more than 35 years of combined legal experience to that work. The firm is retained by private and public sector organizations, both unionized and non-unionized, to look into complaints of harassment, discrimination, workplace violence, theft, fraud and related misconduct, and it also mediates workplace disputes ranging from a single conflict between coworkers to a multi-party disagreement among senior executives.

Shearer was admitted to the Ontario bar in February 2002 after an LL.B. from Queen's University and worked as an Ethics and Privacy Officer at a large nuclear facility, where the role included Code of Conduct investigations, before founding the firm. The firm's site credits Shearer with having conducted more than a thousand workplace investigations and with writing The Law and Practice of Workplace Investigations, published by Emond in 2016. Parnega was admitted to the Ontario bar in February 2000 after an LL.B. from Osgoode Hall Law School, spent close to ten years as a civil litigator at a national Toronto firm handling commercial and insurance disputes, and then worked for a decade as a prosecutor at the Law Society of Upper Canada.