About Jordana Goldlist

Jordana H. Goldlist graduated from York University on the Dean’s List with an Honours degree in Philosophy in 2004 and earned her JD/LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School in 2007. She was Called to the Bar in 2008 and started her career in Civil Litigation, articling at Landy Marr Kats LLP and returning as an associate. Two years later, Jordana grew tired of writing angry letters for a living and decided to pursue her childhood dream of becoming a Criminal Defence Lawyer. In 2010 she joined Edward H. Royle & Associates and spent the next 5 years winning cases across the Province. In 2015, Jordana opened JHG Criminal Law, a firm dedicated to a client-centered approach with a focus on high-risk criminal litigation. She hired her first associate in 2019 and has continually shifted her business model to adjust to the needs of both her clients and the Courts. Today, Jordana maintains a caseload that requires a dedicated team but she stays actively involved with every case so that no client feels like they are just a file being passed around an office.

In addition to her practice, Jordana is active in educating people from all walks of life about the criminal justice system as she has seen it from all sides. In 2018 she spoke about her battles with addiction and street life in a TEDx Talk called “Who Judges The Judge?” questioning a system that judges people for what may be the worst decision they made on the worst day of their life. Since then, she has spoken to thousands of university students about the trap of the criminal justice system. In 2019, she started a scholarship at Osgoode Hall Law School called Vs. All-Odds and in 2021 she expanded her scholarship to Windsor Law School, where students who have overcome extreme personal adversity are provided with financial aid and celebrated for making it to law school like Jordana did: “against all odds.”