Solomon Friedman
Partner, Edelson Clifford D’Angelo Friedman Barristers LLP
Called to the bar in 2010
To Solomon Friedman, firing a gun is a way to relax. He took up long-range rifle shooting at 19 years of age, shortly after marrying, having twins and moving to Israel to study Talmudic Law. “It’s like meditation,” he explains. “When shooting, you have to be aware of every movement in your body, down to each breath. That’s very freeing.”
He kept it up through law school, the birth of his third child and his Supreme Court clerkship under Justice Morris Fish. The shooting range is still a weekend haunt for Friedman, now a 30-year-old partner at Edelson Clifford D’Angelo Friedman Barristers LLP, Ottawa’s top criminal firm. But it’s more than his version of a spa weekend: his knowledge of firearms has helped him land clients.
How? When gun owners get in legal trouble — for, say, not locking up their firearms properly — they call Friedman. His reputation snowballed and he’s now the go-to expert on firearms law in Canada.
Case in point: in 2013, when the National Firearms Association wanted to challenge the three-year mandatory minimum sentence for possessing a restricted firearm, it hired Friedman. He successfully argued the case before the Supreme Court, which found the mandatory sentence unconstitutional.
Friedman is also a regular talking head on CBC and CTV. Such notoriety has helped him secure major murder and terrorism files. His firm’s founder, Michael Edelson, sees in Friedman a future legal titan. “He will ultimately be the leader here. He will become me.”
Now divorced, Friedman shares custody of his three children with his ex-wife. “I don’t sleep a lot,” he says. But he loves his cases — well, some more than others. “When the police find 20 kilos of coke in your client’s house and you’re trying to get it excluded, there’s no question who owns the cocaine. But sometimes I have clients I truly believe are innocent. That’s the most gratifying.”
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Photography by Ian Patterson, hair and makeup by Jessica Haisinger, shot on location at Cluny Bistro & Boulangerie.