Labour and employment law legend John Craig wins OsgoodePD’s CLE Contribution Award

John D. R. Craig is something of an evangelist for continuing legal education.

“I think it’s crucially important for all legal practitioners,” says Craig, a partner at labour and employment law boutique Mathews Dinsdale & Clark LLP and the 2024 winner of OsgoodePD’s 2024 CLE Contribution Award.

Long before the Law Society of Ontario mandated a certain number of hours of CLE activities, Craig was already expounding their virtues as head of CLE at the Bay Street law firm where he practised following his call to the bar in 1999.    

“It’s hard to stay on top of all the developments in the field because there are so many changes in the law and practice, but it’s something that you should want to do – not just for the benefit of your clients, but also for the students you mentor when they are summering or articling at your firm,” Craig says.

And he certainly practises what he preaches: at OsgoodePD. Craig has become a fixture at the school’s downtown Toronto headquarters. In addition to acting as co-program director of Osgoode’s part-time Professional LLM in Labour and Employment Law, he also chairs the annual Osgoode Certificate in Labour Law and is a frequent guest speaker at the Osgoode Certificate in Pension Law.

Once he set his sights on the legal profession as a high school student, Craig began to see the signs of his future in labour and employment law almost immediately, coming of age around the same time as Canada patriated its Constitution.  

“When the Charter of Rights and Freedoms came in, there was a lot more public discussion about labour and human rights issues. Then Brian Mulroney became prime minister and he was the most famous labour lawyer in the whole country,” Craig says.

After graduating from law school at Dalhousie University’s school of law, Craig moved to the U.K. to earn a doctoral agree in comparative labour law at the University of Oxford, before returning to Canada, where he has maintained an international flavour to his practice, regularly representing Canadian employers at meetings of the International Labour Organization and the Inter-American Conference of Ministers of Labour.

Practising first at Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP and Heenan Blaikie – a large full-service firm with a distinct focus on labour law – and later at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP and Mathews Dinsdale, Craig’s focus has always been on providing strategic advice to employers, representing them before arbitrators, labour relations boards, human rights tribunals and the courts, including at the Supreme Court of Canada.

Craig has taught law for almost as long as he has been practising, having joined the faculty at Western University in 1999. Just over a decade later, he helped create Osgoode’s Labour Law Certificate, before he was invited to go even deeper on the subject by taking on the role of co-program director for the Professional LLM in Labour and Employment Law.

“I thought that was a very interesting opportunity because I had always wanted to work with graduate students,” he says.

As a comparative labour lawyer, Craig says he relishes the opportunity that the LLM gives him to explore the approaches that other jurisdictions – both within Canada and abroad – have taken to their laws, regulations and debates around labour law subjects.

In addition, he says the make-up of the LLM class – including lawyers from across the country in private practice and in government, as well as in-house counsel and other working professionals without formal legal training – is conducive to challenging discussions among students and instructors on labour law topics, with the learning flowing in both directions.

“They are all very well capable of having a valuable dialogue about important issues with professors,” Craig says.  

After working initially alongside York University Prof. David Doorey, Craig recently began sharing program directing duties with Osgoode Prof. Sara Slinn and he says they each bring complementary skills to the role.

“Sara is fantastic to work with. She brings the academic perspective and I’m there to give a practitioner’s outlook,” he says. “I think the program is exceptional. It strikes a great balance between the academic rigour and the flexibility that is needed for graduate students who are pursuing their own careers concurrently.”

In whichever forum you find him at Osgoode, Craig says he is always eager to hear from his audience – whether they be students, lawyers, academics, or other professionals in related fields.  

“People sometimes tell me I speak too quickly. I don’t like to drone on, so I might race through the key points and then invite a dialogue with the students, so that we can open up the discussion. My aim is to keep it entertaining and I try to find aspects of every issue that people will be interested in,” says Craig, adding that he has no plans to pare back his award-winning CLE commitments.   

“I’m very honoured to have won this award and I’m going to keep working in the area until the end of my legal career. I’m just as passionate about CLE now as I ever was,” Craig says.