Contemporary Canadian Business Law Principles and Cases

The objective of Contemporary Canadian Business Law is to inform and educate business law students who will need to identify when legal advice may be required.

Students taking undergraduate business law courses are unlikely to become lawyers and are more interested in applying the principles to situations commonly found in the contemporary business world. Instructors look for a text which speaks to their students as business students rather than as potential law students.

Contemporary Canadian Business Law is relevant to business students through the inclusion of pedagogical elements such as Case in Point, Business Law in practice, Front Page Law boxes and A Question of Ethics boxes. The currency of the features helps to engage students by demonstrating how certain situations will tie directly to their business lives.

John A. Willes is an Ontario Barrister and Solicitor, and Emeritus Professor of Labour Relations and Business Law at the School of Business, Queen’s University. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1960, and joined the faculty of Queen’s University on a full-time basis in 1969, where he assumed responsibility for the business law program. Throughout his teaching career, he carried on an extensive commercial and labour arbitration practice, practised law as Counsel to a Kingston, Ontario, law firm, and from 1986 to 2000, acted as a Vice-Chair of the Ontario Public Service Grievance Board. During his long career as a lawyer, he has provided legal advice to many clients with extensive business interests in Canada, the United States, and abroad. He was appointed as a Queen’s Counsel by the Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Ontario in 1984. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queen’s University, Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws degrees from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Toronto. In addition to Contemporary Canadian Business Law (11th ed.) (McGraw-Hill Ryerson), he has authored numerous academic monographs and cases, and is the author of Contemporary Canadian Labour Relations (McGraw-Hill Ryerson), Canadian Labour Relations (Prentice Hall), and Out of the Clouds, the official military history of the First Canadian Parachute Battalion in World War II. Professor Willes is the co-author with John H. Willes of International Business Law (McGraw-Hill, U.S.A., 2004), and Fundamentals of Canadian Business Law (2nd ed.) (McGraw Hill Ryerson, 2008).

John Henry Willes is an Ontario barrister and solicitor. For many years he taught at Queen’s University in both the Faculty of Law and the School of Business, in the LLB, BComm, and MBA programmes. He is the past co-ordinator and principal instructor of the International Business and International Law Programme at Herstmonceux Castle International Study Centre in the United Kingdom. He holds Bachelor of Commerce, Bachelor of Laws, and Master of Business Administration degrees from Queen’s University, and a Master of Laws from Vrije University, Brussels, Belgium. He also holds a Canadian Investment Manager designation from the Canadian Securities Institute. He has been elected as a Fellow of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies in London, England, and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of London, England, in 2002. In addition to serving clients in North America and Western Europe, his business activities include advising on legislative transition in the republics of the former Soviet Union, and enterprise restructuring and business management in the People’s Republic of China. He is a member of the editorial advisory boards of Financial Crime Review and the European Financial Law Review. He is co-author of the 8th edition of Contemporary Canadian Business Law (McGraw-Hill Ryerson).