Jassmine Girgis

Biography

Professor Jassmine Girgis joined the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary in 2008.

Professor Girgis graduated in 2004 from Western Law as the Silver Medalist, then went on to serve as the Law Clerk to the Honourable Mr. Justice J. Edgar Sexton of the Federal Court of Appeal in 2005. She was awarded the Paul Martin Scholarship to undertake her graduate work at the University of Cambridge, where she graduated in 2006. She went on to join the Faculty of Law at Western University, where she remained until she joined the University of Calgary. 

Professor Girgis is a member of the Law Society of Alberta. Prior to that, she was a member of the Law Society of Ontario.

Research Activities

Professor Jassmine Girgis researches and writes in the areas of director and officer liability, bankruptcy and restructuring law, and contract law. Her research primarily focuses on corporate restructuring and director and officer liability, and where they intersect. She also writes extensively on corporate rescue and its intersection with law and economics and with the public interest. 

She has received numerous fellowships and grants for her work on director and officer liability and bankruptcy and insolvency. In 2019, she received both the Stikeman Elliott LLP’s Research Fellowship in Corporate Law and a grant from the Foundation for Legal Research for her work on the oppression remedy and fraudulent conveyances. In 2015, she received the Stikeman Elliott LLP Research Fellowship in Corporate Law, for which she undertook research on how to make the legal test for the oppression remedy more workable. In 2012, Jassmine received a grant from the Foundation for Legal Research for her work on the "Assessment of ‘Going Concern Value’ in a Corporate Restructuring." In 2010, Jassmine received the INSOL Scholar Fellowship in 2010 from INSOL International, to represent Canada and the United States, and undertook work on the status of employees as vulnerable creditors in bankruptcies. In 2007, she received a Second Annual Lloyd Houlden Research Fellowship from the Canadian Insolvency Foundation (CIF) to undertake research in the area of director and officer liability to creditors during insolvency.

Professor Girgis has served on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), Alberta Branch, and as the representative for Canada and the United States in Course Committee, INSOL International Certificate in International Insolvency Law. She has served as an elected Outside Director to the Board of the Canadian Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Professionals (CAIRP), as the Academic Member of the editorial review board for the CAIRP publication, Rebuilding Success, and as a Director and Secretary on the Canadian Insolvency Foundation board of directors. She also served as the Book Review Editor for the Canadian Business Law Journal for six years.

Jassmine has been published in the McGill Law Journal, the Canadian Business Law Journal, the Canadian Bar Review, the International Insolvency Review, the Alberta Law Review, the Annual Review of Insolvency Law, and the Banking and Finance Law Review. She has been retained as an expert witness and she has been an academic commentator in Canadian Lawyer and Lawyers Weekly. Jassmine has presented her research across Canada and internationally.