Lawyer Profile Detail

Biography

Simon Potter is a partner in our Litigation Group in Montréal. He is highly regarded for his versatility as a corporate and commercial trial and appellate lawyer, and his experience in all areas of administrative law dealing with trade and competition issues.

Mr. Potter appears regularly before all federal and Québec courts as well as before numerous regulatory boards and other agencies, such as the Canadian International Trade Tribunal and the Competition Bureau.

In his commercial litigation practice, he has handled a variety of cases ranging from class actions to corporate contractual liability to competition issues and constitutional questions, including the challenge of the federal legislation banning the Canadian advertising of tobacco products.

Mr. Potter has participated in binational panels created under Chapter 19 of the NAFTA to review determinations of dumping and of subsidizations, as well as on a binational panel formed under Chapter 20 of the FTA to hear a dispute between Canada and the United States as to American regulations imposing minimum sizes for lobster imported from Canada.

He also has experience in handling major arbitrations, both at the national and international levels either as counsel to a party or as an arbitrator.

Over the years, Mr. Potter has taken an active part in the direction of various bar associations, including the Canadian Bar Association, of which he was President for the year 2002-2003. Mr. Potter is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a member of the American Bar Association, the International Bar Association, the London Court of International Arbitration and the Permanent Court of Arbitration. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice and the Canada-United States Law Institute's Executive Committee and Advisory Board.

Mr. Potter has frequently appeared as a leading lawyer in the Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business and in the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory, a guide to the leading law firms and practitioners in Canada, as a leading lawyer in the areas of dispute resolution, international trade regulation and litigation, corporate commercial litigation, class action litigation and public law. He is also repeatedly recommended in the areas of international commercial arbitration and litigation-directors & officers liability competition law.

Mr. Potter is also listed in the Lexpert American Lawyer Guide to the leading 500 Lawyers in Canada as a leading lawyer in the areas of class action litigation, corporate commercial litigation and international trade; and in the 2010 edition of The Best Lawyers in Canada in the specialties of Administrative and Public Law, Corporate and Commercial Litigation, Inernational Arbitration, International Trade and Finance Law.

He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1971, and his BCL from McGill University in 1974. Mr. Potter was called to the Québec bar in 1975.