Paul Vayda

BA (Toronto), LLB (Ottawa), LLM (Cambridge)

Paul Vayda has nearly thirty years practicing as a lawyer, and twenty of those years managing a successful law office. He teaches contract law as a sessional lecturer at the University of Windsor.

Prior to pursuing an LLM at University of Cambridge, Mr. Vayda joined the Canadian Auto Workers’ (now Unifor) Legal Services Plan in Oakville, Ontario in 1986 as a staff lawyer.  By 1992, he was promoted to Managing Lawyer, which involves managing an office of typically fifteen staff members while practicing as both as a Barrister and Solicitor primarily in private law.

In 1995, he was appointed a member of the Sheridan College Legal Administration Program Advisory Committee and was active in this role for more than ten years.

Prior to his time at Mohawk College and the University of Windsor, Mr. Vayda was an instructor for the former Bar Admission Course, teaching various seminar courses such as trial advocacy, civil litigation and professional responsibility. More recently, he has contributed to various legal CLE programs in both Hamilton and Toronto, speaking on diverse topics such as the new home warranty program, the impact of bankruptcy on family law, and title insurance.

At Cambridge, Mr. Vayda earned a LL.M.(c),with a commercial specialization in a challenging program that included papers in comparative family law, restitution, commercial insurance law, and international intellectual property law.

In 2014, Mr. Vayda presented and co-authored a paper entitled Legal Services Plans: Crucial-Time Access to Lawyers and the Case for a Public–Private Partnership, at the University of Toronto colloquium on middle-class access to justice. This paper has now been published as a chapter in a compendium, entitled Middle Class Access to Justice, edited by Michael Trebilcock, Anthony Duggan, and Lorne Sossin.