About Me

I’m a proud Canadian, teacher, scholar, husband and father.

At the University of Ottawa’s Common Law Faculty, I teach first year courses in Public Law and Legislation and in Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility.  I also teach an upper year seminar on the Supreme Court of Canada.  I love teaching and have been fortunate to teach so many great students at the University of Ottawa and before that at Osgoode Hall Law School and at the University of Toronto where I began my teacher career before moving to Ottawa.  One of the highlights of my career was receiving the Capital Educators Award as one of the top teachers in Ottawa in 2012.

Several years ago, I co-founded the Public Law Group at the University of Ottawa and we now have over 30 law professors who are members teaching, researching and writing across the breadth of Public Law.  They are an amazing group of colleagues.

I have been fortunate to have had many great opportunities in my career.  I grew up in Vancouver and will always be a lifelong Canucks fan.  I then went off to McGill University and then Harvard Law School.  I received a Fulbright Scholarship to research Israeli constitutional law while clerking for the Supreme Court of Israel.   After being called to the bar in California, I practiced law in San Francisco and then clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena.   I returned to Canada and clerked for Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé at the Supreme Court of Canada. After being called to the bar in Ontario, I joined the Public Law Working Group in Borden Ladner Gervais LLP’s Toronto office where I practiced until the fall of 2003.   At that time, I joined the staff of Ontario’s Attorney General, first as Senior Policy Adviser and then as Director of Policy and from 2005-06 as Chief of Staff.

I also love researching and writing.  My areas of research include public law, the legal profession, the judiciary and legal ethics.   I have co-edited  Public Law at the McLachlin Court: The First Decade (with David A. Wright of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario), Judicial Independence in Context (with Dean Lorne Sossin of Osgoode Hall Law School) and The Sacred Fire: The Legacy of Chief Justice Antonio Lamer / Le feu sacré: l’héritage d’Antonio Lamer, juge en chef du Canada (with Dean Daniel Jutras of McGill).  He is also the General Editor of Canadian Legal Practice: A Guide for the 21st Century.   My book The Canadian Constitution was published by Dundurn Press in 2013.  My big project right now is writing a book on Solicitor-Client Privilege which is the protection given by the law to confidential communications between lawyers and their clients.

Some other research projects involve Conflicts of Interest, the regulation of the legal profession, judicial ethics, the ethics of the expert witness, the enactment of the Canadian Charter Rights and Freedoms and the Supreme Court of Canada.

I have amazing colleagues at the University of Ottawa and I direct The Professionalism Initiative there which includes the first lecture series in a Canadian law school with lectures throughout the year on topics related to lawyers’ ethics.  I also am the co-founder of the Legal Writing Academy and right now I am the Vice-Dean Research for the faculty.

I am a member of the Chief Justice of Ontario’s Advisory Committee on Professionalism and a founding member of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics.  I host and moderate a listserv discussion group related to legal ethics.    I’m a member of the Board of Governors of the Law Commission of Ontario.

I spend a lot of time following my 11 year old son on the baseball and soccer fields.  We cheer for the Boston Red Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays, the Vancouver Canucks and the Ottawa Senators.

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