Alison Craig

Alison Craig is a partner at Lockyer Campbell Posner. She graduated from the University of Guelph in 2002 with an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. Her interest in law led her to choose the prediction and control of adult criminal behavior, based on early childhood data, as the topic of her honours thesis. In 2005, Alison graduated from Queen’s University Law School. While a student at Queen’s, she volunteered for three years at the John Howard Society, serving as Vice President of the Board of Directors in her final year.

While she was in Kingston, Alison worked for the Correctional Law Project, a legal clinic run through Queen’s University. As an employee of the clinic, she represented federal prison inmates at their disciplinary court trials and parole hearings. She still conducts parole hearing for clients throughout Ontario. She has also represented clients before regulatory and licensing tribunals such as the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario. In 2009, she was successful in defending a gambling establishment charged with a variety of drug and Liquor License Act violations and in ensuring that they kept their liquor license.

In 2005, Alison joined Lockyer Campbell Posner as an articling student and after her Call to the Bar in 2006, joined the firm as an associate. In 2011, Alison was made a partner at the firm.

Alison is particularly interested in ensuring all persons involved in the criminal justice system are treated fairly, having equal access to justice, and have access to proper rehabilitative measures when required.

Alison has successfully conducted many trials at both the provincial and superior court levels. She is frequently successful in having gun, drug, and other evidence excluded at trial as a result of violations of clients’ Charter rights. She specializes in defending people charged with drug offences, impaired driving offences, sexual offences, and violent offences. She has successfully defended persons accused of offences ranging from mischief to murder.

In 2007 and 2008, Alison represented nine individuals at the Inquiry into Pediatric Forensic Pathology in Ontario who were convicted of homicides as a result of the flawed pathology work of Dr. Charles Smith. In the years since the Inquiry concluded, several of those convictions have since been quashed by the Ontario Court of Appeal, and she continues to work towards having more of those convictions overturned.

In 2011, Alison was successful in having charges against a client charged with murder dismissed at the conclusion of his preliminary inquiry.

In 2013, after a trial before judge and jury, Alison’s client was acquitted of second degree murder.

In 2014, Alison’s client was acquitted of a first degree murder from 1974, after she successfully had his alleged confessions excluded from evidence. The confessions were the result of an undercover operation known as “Mr. Big”.

In 2015, Alison’s client was charged with assaulting police, amongst other offences. Despite critical evidence going missing upon his arrest, Alison’s client was acquitted after the trial judge found that her client had been the victim of an assault at the hands of the police, and not the other way around.

Alison also has extensive experience conducting Dangerous and Long Term Offender hearings. For example, in 2010, Alison was successful in defending a client who the Attorney General of Ontario sought to have designated a dangerous offender and imprisoned indefinitely.

In addition to her trial work, Alison has successfully argued conviction and sentence appeals at the Summary Conviction Appeals Court for Ontario, the Ontario Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada.

When not in court, Alison volunteers as a moot judge at Osgoode Law School, and sits on panels to provide a defence lawyer’s perspective on important criminal justice issues, including how sexual assault charges are dealt with by the legal system.