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Richard McLaren

Professor McLaren can also be reached at McKenzie Lake Lawyers LLP - 519-679-1407 or mclaren@mckenzielake.com

Counsel to the London, Ontario law firm McKenzie Lake Lawyers LLP and Professor of Law and Interim Dean, the University of Western Ontario; Associate Dean 1979-82; teaching: Alternative Dispute Resolution, Contracts, Banking, Commercial Law, Secured Financing, Real Property Financing, Debtor-Creditor Rights, Sports Law, Bankruptcy and Insolvency and Business Law.

Major publications include Falconbridge on the Law of Mortgages (4th ed.), Commercial Arbitration Law, Secured Transactions in Personal Property in Canada (2nd ed.), Canadian Commercial Reorganisations: Avoiding Bankruptcy, The 2009 Ontario Annotated Personal Property Security Act, and Innovative Dispute Resolution: The Alternative; Editor, Personal Property Security Act Cases (P.P.S.A.C.).

McLaren has experience as a commercial lawyer, a labour and commercial arbitrator, and a mediator. He is a long standing member of International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the world Supreme Court of sports disputes based in Lausanne, Switzerland. He has been a member of the ad Hoc Divisions of CAS at the Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan in 1998 and Turin Italy in 2006; the Summer Olympic Games: in Sydney, Australia 2000; in Athens, Greece, 2004; and, in Beijing, China, 2008 and the Commonwealth Games in Manchester England in 2002.

McLaren was the founder of the ADRsportRed pilot dispute resolution program which later evolved into the Sports Dispute Resolution Centre for Canada where he drafted the Code of Arbitration and served as its Co-Chief Arbitrator for the inaugural three years until 2006. The SDRCC is a body dealing with disputes at the national level of Canada’s sport system.

McLaren has served with distinction as an arbitrator for the National Hockey League salary arbitrations and more recently Player/Agent disputes for the NHL Players’ Association. He was appointed Chairman of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Doping Control to investigate allegations against certain American track and field athletes (Report July 2001) and served for six years as Chairman of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Anti-Doping Tribunal until 2006 when the ATP Doping Programme was transferred to the International Tennis Federation.

He participated with Senator Mitchell in the Major League Baseball inquiry in to the use of steroids which culminated in a Report in December of 2007. He is a member of the Anti-Doping Panel for the International Cricket Council based in Dubai and chairs the Doping Tribunal for the European Tour which serves men’s professional golf. He is also a co-founder of Sport Solution, an athlete advocacy association funded by Athletes CAN located at the Faculty of Law, The University of Western Ontario. He is the incoming chair of the NSLI’s Board of Advisors. In 2011 he was appointed the President of the Basketball Arbitration Tribunal based in Geneva Switzerland and associated with FIBA.

In December 2014, he was appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to investigate allegations of widespread, systematic doping and cover-ups in Russia.