Our Team

Ryan attended law school at the University of Ottawa where he graduated cum laude, won the criminal law award, was the teaching assistant for criminal law and procedure for Professor David Paciocco and clerked for a criminal court judge at the Ontario Court of Justice. Following law school, he worked for the firm of Greenspan Partners where he gained experience defending a range of offences before deciding to start his own criminal law practice.

Since starting his own criminal law practice, he has continued to defend individuals charged with a range of offences, from less serious charges such as domestic assault and impaired driving to very serious offences such as trafficking cocaine, sexual assault and sexual interference, break and enter, aggravated assault and murder. Ryan has successfully defended hundreds of individuals and has represented people at every level of court in Ontario.

Ryan frequently appears in courts in Toronto, Scarborough, Newmarket, Oshawa, Brampton and Milton. Ryan accepts Legal Aid in some cases and is on the Extremely Serious Matters panel.

Ryan is also published in the University of British Columbia Law Review and has authored non-academic articles in Law Times, the Lawyers' Daily and Canadian Lawyer Magazine. He is frequently called on by the media to speak on criminal cases and has been quoted in NOW Magazine, the Toronto Star and has appeared on CBC's the National, CTV News and Global News.

Ryan is a member of the Ontario Bar Association, the Criminal Lawyers' Association and the Toronto Lawyers' Association.

Steven Skurka is a leading criminal defence lawyer who has spent decades defending accused persons charged with a range of offences, including very serious violent offences such as murder, as well as major fraud and white-collar offences. Steve has fearlessly advanced novel and creative defences and has been involved in several precedent-setting cases. He defended R v. Brown, involving a former Toronto Raptors player, and advanced the Charter defence that the police stop had been tainted by racial profiling — a landmark case in this area of Canadian law. Steve has also advanced a successful argument that relied on evidence of marijuana-induced psychosis as well as a successful defence relying on battered child syndrome in a homicide case.

Steve taught criminal procedure at Osgoode Hall Law School for over a decade and acted as the legal analyst for CTV and its morning program, Canada AM. He is also a published author, having written Tilted: the Trials of Conrad Black, a book about Conrad Black's criminal case in Chicago, and a fictional book, Pharo and the Clever Assassin.

Steve is a member of the Criminal Lawyers' Association and a life member of the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers in the United States.