The 23 awards categories recognize outstanding deals, cases, firms, legal departments, and leaders
Nominations are now being accepted for the 2026 Canadian Law Awards, Lexpert and Canadian Lawyer’s seventh annual celebration of exceptional achievements, organizations, and individuals across Canada’s legal industry.
Nominations can be submitted for 23 award categories that recognize excellence in individual cases and deals, outstanding achievements by in-house legal departments and law firms, and leaders in pro bono and diversity initiatives.
The deadline for submissions is 11:59 pm EST on January 30, 2026.
To be considered, nominations must be submitted via the Canadian Law Awards website.
Each year, winners of the Canadian Law Awards are selected via a multi-stage process. In the spring, Lexpert and Canadian Lawyer will unveil their Excellence Awardees, a shortlist of award nominees chosen by the Canadian Law Awards team based on industry expertise. A shortlist of notable deals will be announced separately.
An independent panel of judges will then review the shortlists and score each nominee according to applicable criteria. The nominees in each category with the highest tallied scores will win a Canadian Law Award.
An awards ceremony will take place on Tuesday, May 5, 2026, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where the winners will be announced.
Speaking in May at the 2025 Canadian Law Awards, where Enbridge’s Canadian Legal Mentorship Program was recognized as the Diversity Initiative of the Year, Enbridge campus recruitment advisor Luanda Campbell reflected on the significance of the award for the team behind the program, which facilitates mentor-mentee relationships between Enbridge lawyers and law students.
“This is work that's being done by volunteers. This is work that we are doing after hours, on weekends – all of the lawyers, all of our team are putting in the work on our own time,” Campbell said. “So I think that this is really great validation to everyone on our team for the tremendous work they’ve been doing.”
“It was an amazing cohort of women who had been nominated,” said Kathryn Daniels, who took home the 2025 award for Female Trailblazer of the Year (Academia and In-House). Until recently, Daniels was managing director and head of compliance at CPP Investments.
“It’s wonderful to see everybody and to celebrate how much hard work we all do,” Daniels added.
See a complete list of last year’s winners here.
