Reem Zaia
Reem Zaia is an associate lawyer practising in the Advocacy Department of Gowling WLG's Ottawa office. She is a litigator in the Medical Defence Group. She also practices in areas such as privacy, quasi-criminal and government relations.
Reem's litigation experience spans constitutional, criminal, regulatory and administrative law. She has experience defending accused persons in the regulatory sphere and the criminal justice system. She has served as counsel and co-counsel at all levels of court in Ontario, including the Court of Appeal, the Superior Court of Justice, and the Ontario Court of Justice, as well as matters before the Supreme Court of Canada. She was recently co-counsel in Wang et al. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2017 ONSC 2841, which became a landmark decision on habeas corpus at the Ontario Court of Appeal (2018 ONCA 798).
Reem also maintains an active academic and advisory practice in national security/criminal law.
Reem obtained her law degree from the University of Ottawa. During law school, she served as a law clerk to judges of the Ontario Court of Justice. She was also recognized as Canada's Best Overall Advocate in the Sopinka Cup Tournament by the Advocates' Society and the American College of Trial Lawyers. While completing her Master's degree, she practiced constitutional and administrative law at the appellate level. Reem is also a graduate of the University of Toronto, where she received her LL.M. as the Nathan Strauss Q.C. Fellow in Constitutional Law and published a thesis on the information-sharing provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015.
Reem is a part-time professor of criminal law at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. She often lectures on criminal law and national security matters. She is the author of several articles on constitutional, criminal and national security law.
Prior to joining Gowling WLG, Reem practiced criminal and regulatory law at a prominent boutique litigation firm in Toronto. She also completed her articles at the Crown Attorney's Office in Windsor.
Before joining the legal profession, Reem worked on Parliament Hill for two Members of Parliament, including the former Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons.