Carolena Gordon

Practice Areas

Carolena Gordon has been the Senior Partner of Clyde & Co since July 2021 and she leads the firm’s Management Board. She was previously chair of Clyde & Co’s North American Board and of the Canadian Management Board, as well as a member of the firm’s Global Management Board between 2015 and 2017.

Since taking over as Senior Partner, Carolena has worked with the firm’s Management Board, regional boards, practice groups and professional management team, in particular with CEO Matthew Kelsall, to deliver on the firm’s strategic priorities. This entails building and maintaining sector leadership positions by continuing to expand the firm’s client offering, including through the completion of the second-largest law firm merger in UK history (with BLM in July 2022) and office openings in Milan (Italy), Boston (USA), Cairo (Egypt), Bangkok (Thailand), Santiago (Chile) and Calgary (Canada). Moreover, Carolena is heavily involved in client relationship activities and initiatives and in ensuring the firm’s people are set up for success, which has included the development and roll out of a set of firmwide values, the introduction of an aligned wellbeing offering, an improved and consistent parental leave, and programmes to support the next generation of leadership at the firm.

In addition to her leadership role, Carolena continues to practise and is an experienced and well-known litigator. She runs a Canada-based practice focused on all aspects of dispute resolution and risk management for a range of insurance and commercial clients, with a special interest in the construction and infrastructure sector. Over her 30-year career, Carolena has handled complex, large-scale insurance and commercial disputes, defending clients against major claims, both nationally and internationally. The clients she represents span diverse industries and range from insurers, construction professionals and their firms, engineers in P3 projects to directors and officers, as well as professional orders.

Experience

• Representation of an institution in several class actions of international scope involving allegations of sexual abuse and successful negotiation of the first settlement of class actions of this nature in Québec.

• Representation and settlement of $85M of claims following the collapse of the Montréal Olympic Stadium roof for a wrap-up liability insurer.

• Successful representation of Collège des médecins du Québec in an interlocutory and permanent injunction raising charter rights and the Order’s powers to investigate (Gauthier v. Deschênes and Collège des médecins du Québec, 2010 QCCS 4760).

• Successful representation of a services corporation in provisional injunction proceedings involving issues related to insurance and unfair competition.

• Successful representation of several insurers before the Court of Appeal concerning the duty to defend where multiple insurance policies respond (Compagnie d’assurances Temple v. Compagnie d’assurances ING, 2007 QCCA 82).

• Successful representation of a professional order in a civil litigation suit in a long-term trial (Poulin v. Collège des médecins du Québec, 2011 QCCS 813; 2013 QCCA 187; Leave to appeal to the Supreme Court dismissed on June 13, 2013, No. 35289).