The OBA awarded Doron Gold, a lawyer-turned-therapist, the inaugural Orlando Da Silva Award in June
The first time Doron Gold was invited to an alumni reunion at Osgoode Hall Law School, in 1999, it had been five years since he’d graduated from the program, and he couldn’t bring himself to go.
When he received a 10-year reunion invitation, Gold found himself still dreading the prospect. All his former classmates, he imagined, had great jobs on Bay Street and impressive, fulfilling careers — a far cry from what Gold believed his circumstances were at the time.
By the time Gold got the invitation for his 15-year reunion, though, he not only felt ready for the first time to celebrate with his former classmates, but excited. Gold no longer felt embarrassed by his perceived shortcomings relative to his high-achieving peers; the feeling that they had lapped him in life, as he put it, had subsided. Something had changed between his 10th and 15th school reunions. He was no longer a lawyer.
In June, Gold received the latest of many confirmations that he had made the right decision when he stepped away from practicing law for good in 2006: the Ontario Bar Association awarded him with the inaugural Orlando Da Silva Award, which recognizes efforts to improve mental wellness in Ontario’s legal community. Since leaving his legal practice, Gold’s focus has turned to providing mental health support to clients that include lawyers, eventually culminating in the opening of his own psychotherapy practice in 2023.
It was an “enormous, enormous honour,” Gold says of the OBA award. Upon accepting the honour, he addressed members of the legal community he never quite felt he fit into back when he was practicing law. “I’m not supposed to be here,” Gold recalls telling them that night in June. “I was not awards material.”
These latter sentiments aren’t shared by his peers. “When Doron Gold speaks, the Bar listens,” says Susan Gunter, a partner at Dutton Brock LLP who was one of three lawyers who nominated Gold for the award. “It is because he is speaking to our reality as lawyers and paralegals — a stressful job where talking about mental health was just not done.”
“He has really opened up the conversation and helped reduce the stigma of speaking about wellness as an important part of practicing law,” Gunter says.
Gold’s reputation for helping lawyers address, rather than diminish, how their profession impacts their mental well-being makes it all the more appropriate that he was the recipient of this particular OBA award, which is named after a former president of the bar association who spoke openly about his own struggles with depression.
Da Silva, who currently serves as the chief executive officer of the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada, “was very instrumental in fighting stigma around depression, because he spoke very openly about his own challenges, which was a very revolutionary thing to do in 2015,” Gold says. The two have worked together on and off for many years, says Gold.
Gold himself struggled with self doubt and anxiety throughout his 12-year legal career, but signs that the legal profession was not right for him appeared almost as soon as he started law school. He decided to study law because he wanted to work in politics, he says, but found that the legal concepts he studied in school often felt abstract to the point of being “disconnected from human behaviour or human needs.”
After graduation, Gold cycled through various firms, working on matters spanning insurance, commercial, and banking litigation. He then worked as a sole general practitioner before landing at a small firm in Brampton that specialized in construction litigation. At the firm, one of his colleagues worked on family law matters, so Gold began taking on family law cases too, on legal aid. He was surprised to discover that family law was not only actually compelling to him, but a practice he wanted to give his all to.
“So much of it involved people — people who were vulnerable, women escaping intimate partner violence, and children in need of protection,” Gold says. “Really human things… and a lawyer can step in and really do some good and make a difference.”
In 2005, Gold had grown increasingly unhappy with working in law, and began entertaining the notion of becoming a therapist — a profession he felt could gratify his interest in helping others while allowing him to relinquish one of the aspects of being a lawyer he hated most: fighting. By that point, however, he was nearly 40, and the idea of spending years retraining seemed untenable.
Instead, he left law the following year and launched a coaching practice, which eventually led to him joining what was then called the Ontario Lawyers Assistance Program as a case manager. Gold’s job included helping lawyers and law students seek out peer support, counselling, and addiction treatment. OLAP encouraged him to pursue a master’s degree in social work as he worked, which allows him to provide therapeutic services.
When the Law Society of Ontario decided to hire a private company to start administering an assistance program for lawyers, the Law Society directed the company to hire Gold to help develop what is now known as the Member Assistance Program. Gold left the company after 10 years in 2023 to open his own psychotherapy practice. His clients include, but are not limited to, those working in the legal profession.
Receiving the Orlando Da Silva Award in June was a surprise that made Gold realize the extent to which people were recognizing his work, he says. But something else has driven home the notion that he’s been on the right track since 2006: Gold is happy. And he truly loves what he does.
When Osgoode posted about Gold’s award on Instagram, he says he wished he could “send this to myself 30 years ago — that insecure, self-doubting kid.”
“I think about that around lots of law students and young lawyers, because they're so uncertain about their future, they're so driven, but also not always kind to themselves. And the profession isn't always kind to them,” Gold added. “That why I do my work — I want them to know that they stick to their values, and if they are compassionate with themselves, they're going to be okay.”
