Joy is a founder of A Call to Action Canada, an initiative to promote diversity and inclusion in the legal profession, and of the Canadian Women and Minority Owned Law Firm site, www.cwmlf.ca.

Joy practices commercial litigation and employment law. She established her independent law firm in 1993 after being an associate in the Toronto litigation department of national law firm Blake, Cassels, and Graydon for seven years.

Joy provides strategic legal advice and creative solutions in a wide variety of commercial litigation matters, including: contract disputes; creditor and collection claims; economic injury; shareholder rights; partnership disputes; commercial fraud; banking and negotiable instruments; breach of fiduciary duty; professional negligence; defamation; and estate litigation.

In the employment law field, Joy represents employers and employees in wrongful dismissal claims and in Employment Standards and Human Rights complaints and advises on discipline and severance arrangements. She also acts for employers dealing with former employees who have breached their obligations or misappropriated company assets.

Joy has extensive court experience at both the trial and appellate levels and in dealing with strategic interim proceedings such as injunctions, civil “search warrant” orders and interim costs claims. She takes a practical and results-oriented approach to resolving claims whether through litigation or alternative dispute resolution proceedings.

Joy has been actively involved in issues concerning diversity and inclusion, equity, discrimination and the status of women in the legal profession and also advocates for clear language in legal writing, addressing issues associated with functional illiteracy and its effect on access to justice. She is a past Chair of several committees of the Ontario Bar Association, including the Feminist Legal Analysis Section and the Gender Issues and Submissions Committees, and sat on the Joint Action and Legal Education Committees.  For a number of years she taught Legal Writing and Professional Responsibility at the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Bar Admission course. In addition to speaking regularly at A Call to Action Canada events, Joy has spoken at conferences for the Minority Corporate Counsel Association and the American Bar Association and is on the DiverseCity Speakers List.

Joy obtained her LL.B. from the University of Toronto in 1984, after completing a Master’s degree in Classics and working towards a Ph.D., also at the University of Toronto. Prior to attending law school, she taught Classics at the Universities of Waterloo and Western Ontario.