Seasoned legal professionals – often alumni like Law’89 grad Dhaman Kissoon and Law’84 grad Justice David Stratas – who teach as adjunct faculty offer insights, wisdom, and knowledge that can’t be found in any casebook.

He’s been doing the same “part-time job” for the past 35 years, and yet Dhaman Kissoon, Law’89, still savours the experience. In fact, he cherishes it. “I feel I am giving back and making a real difference.”

During each fall term, Kissoon travels from his Etobicoke, Ont., office one day each week to teach an upper-year seminar course at his alma mater. He is one of many adjuncts – lawyers and judges – who are teaching at Queen’s Law this academic year. These seasoned counsellors have been playing a vital role at the law school since 1959-60. That’s when “special lecturers” T.D. Slater and T.R. Wilcox taught courses in, respectively, real estate transactions and aspects of legal practice.

Adjuncts now complement the teaching roster of 35 full- and part-time faculty at Queen’s Law, which includes some of Canada’s brightest and most knowledgeable legal scholars, several of whom are internationally recognized.

“Our adjunct professors are respected experts in their specialized fields, often with advanced degrees, research track records, and extensive experience in practice,” says Dean Colleen M. Flood. “They immerse students in the cutting edge of their specialized fields, equipping them with advanced skills that are essential for success in practice. As teachers, our adjuncts take great pride in educating the next generation of lawyers.”

Like Kissoon, many of the adjuncts who teach with indelible effect at Queen’s Law are highly dedicated, on the job for a decade or more. They offer focused courses in 10 subject areas, among them international law and health law, litigation/dispute resolution, legal theory, and corporate/commercial law.

While Kissoon specializes in criminal law and immigration law in his own practice, the course he offers is Racism and Canadian Legal Culture. Born in Guyana, he has for many years been passionately concerned with racism in the legal profession – and in Canadian society in general.

“During my student days, my Law’89 classmate Ian Smith – who is now an Ontario Superior Court justice – and I did some research that looked at racism and the Canadian legal system,” Kissoon recalls. “When we graduated, then-Dean John Whyte asked if we would be interested in teaching a course based on what we had learned.”

The class, which they began teaching in 1990, was the first of its kind offered in any Canadian law school. “Since then, a lot of other law schools have come on board. That said, Queen’s Law has always been a leader in this area, and I am pleased and honoured to still be teaching this course.”

Kissoon doesn’t lecture his students, but instead presents them with a problem, and then asks for help to solve it collaboratively. “Students enjoy this approach,” he notes. “I wish I could say that with the passage of so many years, the topics we talk about are different. However, the reality is that while the case law has changed, the issues we are dealing with have not.”

The need for the Racism and Canadian Legal Culture course remains compelling. Not only does the material remain relevant and timely, but students enjoy Kissoon’s teaching. The proof is in the proverbial pudding: his course always has full enrolment, and he’s a four-time winner of a Stanley M. Corbett Award for Teaching Excellence, a prestigious honour that’s voted on by members of the Law Students’ Society.

“Professor Kissoon’s course reshaped my understanding of Canadian law ... and cultivated critical thinking and problem-solving skills that are essential for success in law and in the everyday world,” says Rashmi Kumar, Law’17, now an assistant Crown attorney in the Greater Toronto Area.

Such laudatory reviews of the adjunct faculty who teach at Queen’s Law have become so typical that they’re the rule rather than the exception. That’s certainly true where Justice David Stratas, Law’84, LLD’12, is concerned.

Stratas, who’s the winner of a record 10 faculty-wide teaching awards (including four Corbett Awards) as well as an H.R.S. Ryan Law Alumni Award of Distinction, began serving as an adjunct professor in fall 1994. Then a partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP – and later at Heenan Blaikie LLP – in Toronto, he was known as one of Canada’s most respected administrative law and constitutional law litigators.

Initially, he taught Advanced Constitutional Law (first with former Dean John Whyte, Law’68, then with David Mullan, LLM’73, and then solo). Following his 2009 appointment to the bench of the Federal Court of Appeal, Stratas instead began offering a one-credit skills course in legal writing and advocacy, LAW 633, taught over just a couple of weekends in one term. One of the school’s most intensive offerings, it’s also one of the most popular with students. Word has clearly gotten around; every year for the 16 years Stratas has taught the course, enrolment has been at the peak capacity of 110 students.

It’s easy to understand why. “David is practical. He’s erudite, and he’s a charming teacher,” says David Williams, Law’19, who served for a year as Stratas’s law clerk after graduating, and now practises with Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in Toronto. “The course in legal writing sets a strong foundation, and David’s zeal for the subject inspires students to hone their craft for the rest of their lives. It certainly did that for me.”

For his part, Stratas says he finds teaching to be enormously rewarding and a fitting way to give back to the law school and to the legal profession. “I was the beneficiary of great sessional lecturers and professors when I was a law student. Serving as an adjunct professor gives me a chance to impart the same sort of information and insights that I was fortunate enough to receive.”

While Stratas is now 64 and could start thinking about becoming a supernumerary justice, or even retiring entirely, he has no intention of doing either. “As I get older and start to reduce my extracurricular activities, continuing to teach at Queen’s Law will always be high on my list of things that I want to keep doing. I’ll stay with it for as long as I’m needed.”

Stratas’s willingness to take – or rather to make – the time to teach at Queen’s Law isn’t simply because he enjoys doing so or because it affords him a break from the onerous demands of his work in Ottawa.

“Teaching is the honour of a lifetime for me. It’s wonderful to share my perspective, that of an outsider who’s been in the battles, who’s won and lost, and who has experienced a lot in his career – unequivocally for the betterment of the students who take my course,” Stratas says. “I strive to set an example of what they could and should be when they graduate. That is to be very good communicators, to assist, to be hard working, to be personable, to be responsive, and always, to be kind.”

He aims to add an extra dimension to the students’ education, “to help them graduate even more well-rounded and knowledgeable than they might otherwise be,” he adds. “I find that enormously gratifying.”

It’s this same collegial, caring approach to teaching that for 66 years and counting has endeared David Stratas, Dhaman Kissoon, and so many other adjunct faculty to students at Queen’s Law. As Associate Dean Kevin Banks, who oversees adjunct hiring, puts it, “Our adjunct professors aren’t just great teachers, they’re also terrific mentors and role models.”

Teaching the next generation

Lawyers and judges, are you interested in teaching a course in your area of expertise? Then follow Queen’s Law on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/school/queen'slaw/) to learn about adjunct faculty postings as they become available.   

By Ken Cuthbertson, Law’83

(This story was originally published in Queen’s Law Reports 2024 in November 2024.)