Ottawa Personal Injury and Disability Lawyer

Bilingual Ottawa Personal Injury Lawyer Éliane Lachaîne is a partner at Burn Tucker Lachaîne PC, practicing exclusively in plaintiff personal injury and disability insurance law. She serves French- and English-speaking clients across Ontario in injury, insurance, and disability matters.

Year Called to the Bar: 2005

An Ottawa Personal Injury Lawyer Certified in Civil Litigation.

Éliane was certified as a Specialist in Civil Litigation by the Law Society of Ontario in 2020.

The designation is granted to lawyers who meet defined standards of experience in a specific practice area, supported by peer review, and who maintain that standing through ongoing requirements. It is a formal credential rather than a self-description. In Eastern Ontario, this is more than a convenience. Ontario’s Courts of Justice Act gives litigants the right to proceed in French, but exercising that right in practice depends on having counsel, and relatively few Ontario lawyers are authorized to do so.

Practicing in Both Official Languages

Éliane conducts her practice in French and English.

In Ottawa and eel who can actually run the file in French – pleadings, discoveries, mediation, trial.

For a francophone client already dealing with a serious injury or a denied disability claim, describing symptoms, treatment, and daily limitations in a second language adds difficulty at exactly the wrong moment. An Ottawa Bilingual Ottawa Personal Injury Lawyer removes that layer.

What an Ottawa Personal Injury Lawyer Éliane Lachaîne Handles

• Motor vehicle claims
• Slip and fall and other injury claims
• Traumatic and severe head injury claims
• Disability insurance claims
• Long-term disability denials
• Fatality and wrongful death claims

Burn Tucker Lachaîne PC is a firm of six lawyers that represents only injured and disabled people. Éliane co-founded it in 2014 with partners Colleen Burn and Laurie Tucker, after articling in Ottawa in 2004 and practicing as an associate until 2013.

Disability Claims and How They Differ

A denied long-term disability claim is a contract dispute, not an injury claim – and an Ottawa Personal Injury Lawyer who handles both sees them arrive together often

It turns on the wording of the policy – particularly the shift most policies make at the two-year mark, from an inability to do your own occupation to an inability to do any occupation. Many claimants who are genuinely unable to return to their work lose benefits at that transition.

The firm handles group, private, and professional policies as well as OTIP, HOODIP, and CAF/SISIP claims, alongside life, critical illness, and accidental death and dismemberment matters.

Teaching, Writing and Speaking

Éliane taught Trial Advocacy at the University of Ottawa’s Common Law program in Fall 2017.

She is a long-time member of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association, has written for The Litigator, and has presented at OTLA conferences and webinars on collateral benefits, the tort of family violence, examinations for discovery, and advocacy at mediation.

She helped launch the Ateliers annuels de plaidoirie en français run by the Association des juristes d’expression française de l’Ontario, where she has served as co-chair, panelist and moderator since 2015. She has sat on the County of Carleton Law Association’s Civil Litigation Conference planning committee since 2020 and presented on Civil Rules Review at the Law Society of Ontario’s Sommet francophone in September 2025.

Community and Pro Bono Work

• Board of Directors, Association des juristes d’expression française de l’Ontario (2025–present)
• Pro Bono Lawyer, REACH Canada (2011-present)
• Pro Bono Lawyer, Law Help Ontario (2011-present)
• Board of Directors, Center Espoir Sophie (2017-2023) – Ottawa’s only francophone drop-in centre for marginalized women
• Board of Directors, CALACS Francophone d’Ottawa (2011-2017); volunteer from 2003

Education

• Certified Specialist in Civil Litigation, Law Society of Ontario, 2020
• Called to the Bar of Ontario, 2005
• LL.B., University of Ottawa, 2003
• B.A. Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, 2000

Offices Across Ontario

Éliane practices as an Ottawa Personal Injury Lawyer from the firm’s Alta Vista Drive office, with additional locations in Toronto, Waterloo and Hawkesbury, and represents clients throughout eastern Ontario and the province.

Contact a Bilingual Ottawa Personal Injury Lawyer

Free consultation. Éliane can be reached directly at 613-319-0627 or by email at elachaine@burntucker.com. The firm’s main Ottawa line is 613-233-6898.

Ottawa: 101–1815 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa, ON K1G 3Y6

Alternatively, submit the contact form below – it goes directly to her inbox.