Amy F. Salyzyn
Amy F. Salyzyn
Associate Professor


Room
57, Louis Pasteur St., Room FTX 369
Phone
Office: 613-562-5800 ext. 7515
Office: 613-562-5124


Biography

Amy Salyzyn is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. She is a member of the Law Society of Ontario. 

Amy received her J.S.D. from Yale Law School for her dissertation exploring the judicial regulation of lawyers in common law jurisdictions. She also received her LL.M. from Yale Law School and her J.D. from the University of Toronto Law School, where she was awarded the Dean’s Key upon graduation. Before coming to the University of Ottawa, Amy served as a judicial law clerk at the Court of Appeal for Ontario and practiced at a Toronto litigation boutique. Her litigation practice included a wide variety of civil and commercial litigation matters including breach of contract, tort, professional negligence, securities litigation and employment law as well as administrative law matters. In Fall 2011, she was a Visiting Researcher at Osgoode Hall Law School. 

At the University of Ottawa, Amy teaches Torts as well as Dispute Resolution and Professional Responsibility in the first year program. She also teaches an upper year seminar in legal ethics. In 2014, Amy was selected to be a Fellow at the National Institute for the Teaching of Ethics and Professionalism. 

Amy has written extensively in the area of legal ethics, lawyer regulation, the use of technology in the delivery of legal services and access to justice, having now published over 20 articles in Canadian and international peer-reviewed journals on these topics. She is also the co-author of Understanding Lawyers' Ethics in Canada, 3rd Edition, a leading Canadian legal ethics textbook and a General Editor of Canadian Legal Practice, a key practice resource in the area. Amy is a regular legal ethics columnist for Slaw.ca, a Canadian online legal magazine, and has contributed to Jotwell.com. 

In 2018, Amy received an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation which financially supported a five-year project that studied and suggested concrete ways that technology can be used to facilitate more effective access to justice for Ontarians. In previous research funded by SSHRC, Amy, along with her UOttawa colleagues Professor Bouclin and Professor McGill, explored risks and opportunities relating to the use of mobile and web-based apps to enhance access to justice. A report on the research can be found here. This research team, along with Professor Teresa Scassa, continued its work relating to legal apps and developed A Privacy Code of Practice for Legal Apps, with funding support from the federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Amy is also currently a co-investigator on a $2.5 million SSHRC Partnership Grant that is exploring, among other things, the ethical use of technology in our justice system. In 2021, together with her colleague Florian Martin-Bariteau, Amy prepared Legal Ethics in a Digital Context for the Canadian Bar Association. This publication aims to help lawyers productively and responsibly interact with technology in their legal practices by identifying areas of potential benefits and risks, as well as best practices and further resources. 

Amy is the Board Chair of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics. She has also served as co-chair of the board of the National Association of Women and the Law and as a “Learned Counsel Advisor” for the National Association of Bar Counsel (US), Entity Regulation Committee. 

Recent Publications (2013-2023)

 “Open Courts, Privacy and Equality in a Digital Era: The Supreme Court of Canada’s 2021 Open Court Jurisprudence” (2023) 108(2) Supreme Court Law Review (with Samuel Singer)  

“A Mixed Bag: Critical Reflections on the Ethical Principles for Judges” (2022) 100(3) Canadian Bar Review 325 (with Richard Devlin, Jula Hughes, Pooja Parmar and Stephen G.A. Pitel) 

“AI and Legal Ethics” Artificial Intelligence and the Law in Canada, in Florian Martin-Bariteau & Teresa Scassa, (eds) Toronto: LexisNexis Canada, 2021 

“Professional Responsibility and the Defence of Extractive Corporations in Transnational Human Rights and Environmental Litigation in Canadian Courts” Legal Ethics 24(2) (2021) Legal Ethics 24 (with P. Simons) 

“Judging by Numbers: How will judicial analytics impact the justice system and its stakeholders?” Dalhousie Law Journal 44:1 (2021) Dalhousie Law Journal 250 (with J. McGill) 

“Developing Privacy Best Practices for Direct-to-Public Legal Apps: Observations and Lessons Learned, (2020) 18(1) Canadian Journal of Law and Technology (with T. Scassa, J. McGill and S. Bouclin). 

“What Makes Court Forms Complex? Studying Empirical Support for a Functional Literacy Approach”, (2019) 15 Journal of Law and Equality 31 (co-authored with J. Burkell, E Costain and B Piva) 

“Protecting the Public Interest: Law Society Decision-Making after Trinity Western University” (2019) 97(1) Canadian Bar Review 70 (co-authored with A Woolley) 

“Another One Bites the Dust!  Bolstered Law Offices and a Blocked Taxman in Chambre des notaires du Québec” (2017) 77 Supreme Court Law Review (2d) 

“Mobile and Web-based Legal Apps: Opportunities, Risks and Information Gaps” (2017) 15(2) Canadian Journal of Law and Technology (co-authored with S Bouclin and J McGill) 

"From Colleague to Cop to Coach: Contemporary Regulation of Lawyer Competence” (2017) 95(2) Canadian Bar Review 489 

“Literacy Requirements of Court Documents: An Underexplored Barrier to Access to Justice” (2016) 33: 2 Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 263 (co-authored with J. Burkell, L. Isaj, and B. Piva) 

“A False Start in Constitutionalizing Lawyer Loyalty in Canada (Attorney General) v. Federation of Law Societies of Canada), (2016) 76 Supreme Court Law Review (2d) 169 

“Zealous Advocacy or Exploitative Shakedown?: The Ethics of Shoplifting Civil Recovery Letters” (2015) 36 Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues 1 

“What if We Didn’t Wait?: Canadian Law Societies and the Promotion of Effective Ethical Infrastructure in Law Practices” (2015) 92(3) Canadian Bar Review 507 

“The Judicial Regulation of Lawyers in Canada” (2014) 37 Dalhousie Law Journal 481 

“Positivist Legal Ethics Theory and the Law Governing Lawyers: A Few Puzzles Worth Solving” (2014) 42(1) Hofstra Law Review 1063 

 “Queer Insights on Women in the Legal Profession” (2014) 17(2) Legal Ethics 231 (co-authored with J McGill) 

“John Rambo v. Atticus Finch: Gender, Diversity and the Civility Movement” (2013) 16(1) Legal Ethics 97 

“Foreclosures, Freemen, Foreign Law Schools and the Continuing Search for Meaningful Access to Justice: Correspondent’s Report from Canada” (2013) 16(1) Legal Ethics 223 

“A Comparative Study of Attorney Responsibility for Fees of an Opposing Party” (2013) 3(2) St. John’s Journal of International and Comparative Law 71.