Jean Polak

Jean Polak’s litigation experience began on Bay Street and has since been enriched by Main Street. In addition to her skills as a litigator she also has decades of experience as a solicitor in the areas of estate planning and administration. Her current practice focuses on wills and estates, estate and commercial litigation (such as construction liens, employment law and property disputes). In that context she has been a participant in many mediations. She is a busy prosecutor for local municipalities and in the first decades of her practice in Muskoka she also did criminal defence work. She is also a member and alternate chair of the Ontario Review Board.

Jean was called to the bar in 1989, and began her legal career in Toronto at what was then Tory Tory DesLauriers & Binnington. She took a leave of absence to spend a year in England as a Fox Scholar, working with barristers of the Middle Temple, London. Jean returned to Torys as an associate and continued her busy practice as a civil litigator. In 1993, Jean chose to relocate to Muskoka, where she initially worked for a small firm, then opened her own practice in 2000. She successfully ran that sole practice for over twenty years before joining Barriston LLP as Counsel in 2021.

Outside of the practice of law, Jean has always been busily engaged in her community as a volunteer. In 2019 she was awarded the Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship by the Province of Ontario.