2017 Hot List Recipient
2020 Hot List Recipient
2021 CEO of the Year
Accolades
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Diamond & Diamond Lawyers LLP is a national Canadian law firm rooted in plaintiff personal injury advocacy. Led by founding partners Jeremy Diamond, Sandra Zisckind, and Isaac Zisckind, the firm combines trial experience, client accessibility, and a visible public-education platform. Its team includes more than 65 lawyers and over 250 support staff, serving clients through 12 listed offices across Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia. The firm handles personal injury, class actions, civil and commercial litigation, and real estate matters. It offers free initial consultations and contingency-fee arrangements for personal injury cases, with a focus on practical, responsive representation.
Company Profile
65+
Lawyers across Canada
250+
Support staff nationwide
4
Provinces with offices
12
Listed Canadian offices
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Milestones
Media
Accolades
Company Profile
Years of Experience
25
Tenure IN current position
2017 - Present
career kick-off
Called to the Ontario bar in 2003 after earning LLM from George Washington University
Sandra Zisckind
Managing partner at Diamond & Diamond LLP
Sandra Zisckind set out to be the next
Amal Clooney. She helped found Canada’s largest personal injury firm instead, crafting a culture without ego or old boys’ clubs and creating a platform for women in law
Read on
“I’d like to pretend we knew what we were doing, but we did not. Law school doesn’t prepare you for marketing or business. A lot of it was learning on the fly and figuring out what works and what doesn’t”
Sandra Zisckind,
Diamond & Diamond LLP
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2003
2013
2015
2017
2019
Called to the Ontario bar after completing an LLM, beginning in insurance defence before moving to plaintiff personal injury work
2003
Joined Jeremy Diamond and Isaac Zisckind in assuming ownership and operational leadership of Diamond & Diamond Lawyers LLP
2013
Helped expand the rebuilt firm to 12 Ontario offices, emphasizing regional access, paperless operations, and in-house legal capacity
2015
Led expansion beyond personal injury toward a one-stop legal services model, including real estate and civil commercial work
2017
Helped spearhead a nationwide Roundup class action against Bayer and Monsanto, coordinating a three-city media launch
2019
Milestones
Published Sep 14, 2026
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One of the only female managing partners of a national Canadian law firm of this scale, overseeing 65+ lawyers and 250+ support staff
Prominent legal commentator on CP24 and CFRB 1010 and co-host of the Know Your Rights podcast
“Being the largest personal injury firm, we have a duty to tell people this is a place where you can get justice. Anything we can do to open up those avenues to those who need them, we’ll do”
Sandra Zisckind,
Diamond & Diamond LLP
the people around you is very, very important.”
Zisckind is also quick to underline that there’s no old boys’ club: no mandatory post-work drinks or client golf excursions. At Diamond & Diamond Lawyers, “our people come in, do what they need to do, and go.”
“What a lot of the big firms are missing, in my opinion, is that it shouldn’t be an atmosphere where you must be one of the guys to fit in – right away, that’s exclusive.”
The voice in the room As a female managing partner, Zisckind is acutely aware that the way she leads and what she builds sends a message. True to her nature, she is “always looking to expand everything.” And when anyone suggests she slow her pace?
“Not in my nature,” Zisckind answers with a laugh.
The firm is expanding into medical malpractice, and its class actions department, launched off the back of the Roundup case against Bayer and Monsanto, is doing well. Zisckind sees class actions as the future of personal injury law, and she’s planning accordingly.
Diamond & Diamond Lawyers continues to embrace non-traditional legal marketing that’s served it so well in the past, including its Know Your Rights podcast. Part of the firm’s brand is being informative and educational.
The public didn’t know much about contingency, for example. Many sexual assault survivors aren’t aware there’s a civil route, not just a criminal one. The firm also recently filmed an informational segment on child luring.
“Being the largest personal injury firm, we have a duty to tell people this is a place where you can get justice,” Zisckind says. “Anything we can do to open up those avenues to those who need them, we’ll do.”
It all traces back to that original instinct to use her talents for good. The setting turned out to be different from what she imagined, and the stage closer to home, but the impact is real.
“It wasn’t always easy; it’s taken a lot of hard work and determination, but I’m really proud of the firm we have today,” Zisckind reflects. “I believe more women need to take leadership roles, and that more companies should encourage it. Put a woman in charge; the whole feel of a place changes. And that matters.”
No ego and no old boys’ club The firm now has over 65 lawyers and more than 250 support staff, necessitating a more defined structure than the early days. It runs on a subgroup model in which teams have named leads who are accountable for everyone under them, providing checks and balances, Zisckind notes.
But structure alone doesn’t make a culture, or at least not the kind of culture Zisckind wants. That starts at the top. She’s big on empowering the department leads she appoints, shying away from any form of micromanagement.
“I don’t believe in it; it’s a good way to fail,” she says. “I’m not [hovering over] their head. Either they’re going to succeed or they’re not.”
Lawyers in regional offices get particular autonomy. A lawyer in the Windsor office, for example, told her early on that Windsor was a different animal, and she deferred. If clients are happy and results are strong, she doesn’t interfere.
“I never let my ego get in the way,” Zisckind explains. “If there’s a better way to do something – especially coming from someone with boots on the ground – tell me. I don’t ever pretend I know everything.”
Diamond & Diamond Lawyers embraces diversity, from backgrounds and cultures to training and genders. It wasn’t by design, Zisckind says, recalling some serious self-reflection after the Black Lives Matter movement erupted. Was she part of the problem? But looking around, she realized the people at the firm do indeed represent a range of characteristics.
“I like a diverse group because it’s about language – it’s about culture. A personal injury lawyer is an empathetic person. If you’re from a different region and you’ve gone through strife, you understand the pain. I never really paid attention to diversity as a concept – I just hired based on who was best for the job, without any preconceived notion of who that person should be.”
Another point of pride is that nearly every department head at the firm is a woman. As one of the few female managing partners of a firm this size in the country, making room for more women is a priority for her.
Zisckind recalls meetings early on where people wouldn’t make eye contact with her, talked as if she weren’t in the room, or assumed she was the secretary, and the “honeys” and “sweethearts” were a given. While much has changed, she still recognizes some of the same obstacles for her younger female lawyers today.
“I’d like to pretend we knew what we were doing, but we did not. Law school doesn’t prepare you for marketing or business. A lot of it was learning on the fly and figuring out what works and what doesn’t.”
Diamond & Diamond Lawyers was one of the first Canadian firms to introduce American-style advertising. Calling the campaign “wildly successful,” Zisckind says it may not have been a well-designed plan, but it put the firm on the map.
The three young lawyers sat in disbelief as a torrent of work came in following the launch of their bold advertising, and initially they turned to a referral system out of necessity. It was survival mode but it never made business sense.
“You’re building somebody else’s company, somebody else’s goodwill,” Zisckind explains, adding that if you send a client to person X and then their sister later gets in an accident, “they’re going straight back to person X.” Over the years, “we’ve added lawyers and lawyers and lawyers,” she says, and now keep 95 percent of cases in-house.
“It’s all the result of luck, a little bit of brains, and a lot of hard work.”
Zisckind says. “Switching over to the plaintiff side was the next logical step because I’d rather use my talents on people who actually need my help, not the big insurance companies.”
Three lawyers and a wildly successful gamble While her work may not have been at The Hague, Zisckind still walked away with invaluable experience. She learned a lot, much of which translated into an edge on the plaintiff side.
“It taught me about insurance companies’ brains – how they think, the way they work – and that really helped me, along with the trial experience I had under my belt,” she says. “I was able to see the bigger picture, and to some extent it helped me predict where the market was going.”
With signature ambition, Zisckind decided to establish her own law firm. Diamond & Diamond LLP opened its doors in 2013, co-founded with Jeremy Diamond and her brother Isaac Zisckind. The trio received a lot of advice about what they should and shouldn’t do, but much of it didn’t ring true to the vision they had for the firm.
Zisckind had learned by this time to trust her gut, and she turned to Ross Cellino of what was then Cellino & Barnes.
Cellino invited Zisckind to Buffalo for a chat, telling her that one of the big Las Vegas personal injury firms had advised him when he first started out, and he was passing the mentorship forward. He shared excellent, actionable advice about how to start and “that hour probably set us up on the pathway for success,” says Zisckind, who is managing partner of Diamond & Diamond Lawyers.
Sandra Zisckind believed she was going to be the next Amal Clooney. Looking back, that seemed to be her goal anyway, as she completed her master of laws at George Washington University and interned with Senator John McCain.
“I had a vision in my head that Amal and I were the same person,” recalls Zisckind. “I believed I too would work at The Hague one day.”
Her return to Canada, however, landed her somewhere else entirely: insurance defence work. Coming home during the early-2000s recession meant her options were limited, but that didn’t deter her. Zisckind poured herself into the role. Quick to think on her feet, she did exceptionally well, winning motion after motion.
But something didn’t feel right.
“I was on the wrong side; I was denying people as opposed to helping them,”
Built on her own terms
Spotlight
“The support of my partners – who respected me and understood what I was doing – made a huge difference,” she says. “I make sure to have conversations with them one on one about imposter syndrome and encourage them to speak up more and stand their ground. “Fake it till you make it,” like anything in life.”
Another differentiator for the firm is a willingness to “just figure it out, as simple as that” when any lawyer requires flexibility. But that mindset is a particular draw for female lawyers who want to start families, Zisckind notes.
The head of the trial department, for example, has had three children while with Diamond & Diamond Lawyers, and it never once impacted her career track. That’s rare in a setting where pregnancy can be treated as a liability.
“She’s so appreciative because she didn’t have to choose between her family and her career,” Zisckind says. “Breeding loyalty by being fair and good to
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