Speaker details

Biography

Dr. Paul Paton, KC has over thirty years of experience as a practicing lawyer, senior political advisor, professor and university administrator. He is recognized internationally by the profession and academy as an expert in regulation and professional responsibility for lawyers, ethics in corporate contexts, the future of law/legal education, multidisciplinary practice/alternative business structures, and corporate governance issues. He is currently working on projects concerning ethical regulation of artificial intelligence, ABS and MSO regulation, and the future of legal education. An officer of the IBA Alternative and New Law Business Structures Committee since 2021 and its Chair/Co-Chair since 2023, Paton was appointed to the IBA Future of Legal Services Commission in 2025. He has spoken at IBA Annual Meetings in Seoul, Miami, Paris, Mexico City, and Toronto, and as part of the IBA special meeting on the regulation of lawyers and money laundering at Chatham House in 2024. A member of the ABA International Trade in Legal Services Committee (2024-2027), he previously served as a Presidential Appointee to the ABA Professional Regulation Committee (2020-2023) and had been Reporter on Alternative Business Structures to ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission (2010-13). He spent five terms on the Canadian Bar Association's National Ethics and Professional Issues Committee, two as Vice Chair and two as Chair, and was Interim CEO of the CBA in 2021. A full-time law professor since 2004, he was Dean of Law and Kennedy Chair in Law and Ethics, Chapman University (USA) (2023-2025) and formerly Dean of Law, University of Alberta (Canada) (2014-19) and Lawlor Chair in Ethics (2019-2023). Judicial Law Clerk to the Chief Justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal (Canada), he spent a decade in practice, first as a commercial litigation associate and partner for a major firm; as Justice & Social Policy Advisor to the Premier of Ontario; and as in-house counsel to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP on ethics and regulatory matters, where he led the initiative launching the establishment of PwC Canada's affiliated law firms. In 2019-2020, he worked with the rules committee implementing the Arizona Supreme Court's Task Force recommendations for non-lawyer ownership of legal services delivery models, and held the pen on what became ABA Resolution 100 in 2023 to address anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing. He has published leading works on ethics and lawyer responsibility to clients and the public dating back to the seminal article "Lawyers, Ethics and Enron" in the Stanford Journal of Law, Business and Finance in 2002. Paton holds a B.A. and LL.B from the University of Toronto, an M.Phil in International Relations from Cambridge University and a JSM and JSD from Stanford. He is actively licensed as Barrister & Solicitor in the provinces of Alberta and Ontario, Canada.