Ray Critch

Ray is a Senior Associate with the St. John’s office. He spent the first eight years of his career working at a boutique litigation firm and a large regional firm, where he handled both plaintiff and defense-side insurance and personal injury matters. He has argued on behalf of plaintiffs at all levels of court in Newfoundland and Labrador and the Supreme Court of Canada (Lynch v. City of St. John’s) and has personal injury trial experience (Jadhav v. Kielly).

But he is also a human being. When he finished law school in 2005 he initially decided not to be a lawyer and went into academia instead. He finished his MA from Memorial University in 2007 and then received the Rothermere Fellowship to complete his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh (2010). After that, he worked and taught in Vienna, Austria, for a year before returning to work and teach at Memorial and raise his children here, in Newfoundland.

While that was the right decision for Ray at 25-years old, when he was 34 he realized that he was more interested in legal questions and helping people than in writing academic philosophy papers. He Articled, got Called to the Bar, and hasn’t looked back: it was also the right decision. Now he spends his days helping clients navigate the complex and choppy waters of the legal system and dealing with insurance companies on their behalf.

That said, he wasn’t about to entirely give up writing for fun. In 2022, once the pandemic restrictions lifted he began heading out to sports bars a couple times a week to write mystery novels. The first one, The Beltane Massacre, was published by Breakwater Books in 2025.

 

Education