After graduating from Harvard Law School with an LL.M. in 1971, and after articling for John Sopinka at what was then known as Fasken, Calvin, Williston & Swackhammer (now known as Fasken), I joined the litigation group at Goodman and Carr, where I was a junior to Benzion Sischy (who subsequently became the construction lien master in Toronto for many years). Although my earlier academic background was in the very esoteric area of sociological jurisprudence, Sischy guided and encouraged me to develop an interest in the more practical field of construction law, and, despite my absolute lack of any background in the area, I actually became most interested in it. However, when my then wife was admitted as a first year student to Queen’s Law School, I quickly secured a position as a law professor there, left my job at Goodman and Carr, and moved with her to Kingston.
Teaching torts and civil procedure, it took me ten hours to prepare for every hour of classroom time. Nevertheless, I found that the life of a law professor at Queen’s at the time was ideal -- regular intellectual and social exchanges with students, colleagues and others on campus, and lunches on the back lawn of the Faculty Club overlooking the sail boats on Lake Ontario. In the very apartment building where my wife and I lived, Professor Hugh Lawford (a colleague of mine at Queen’s) was working on an important legal research project which eventually became known as “Quicklaw” (QUIC/LAW), the online service which revolutionized how law is practised. Hugh went on the become President and CEO of LexisNexis.
The only shortcoming in my life as professor was that the phone rarely rang, and I missed the “action” of a busy litigation practice on Bay St. When my wife decided to transfer to U of T Law School for her second year, I seized the opportunity to move back into practice in Toronto, and joined what was then called Blaney, Pasternak, Smela, Watson & Eagelson (now known as Blaney McMurtry). There I worked with Lloyd Cadsby, who specialized in both family law and construction claims. This gave me another opportunity to practice in the construction law field, and I used it as a platform for launching my career. Through my contact with my partner Bill McMurtry, and with his brother Roy McMurtry who was Attorney General at the time, I was fortunate, at age 29, to have been selected to become a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee on the Draft Construction Lien Act, and I used that experience as an opportunity to learn everything there was to know about liens and to write a book on the Construction Lien Act shortly after it had been proclaimed in force in 1983.