About

michael gannon

A graduate of UVic Law School, Michael first traveled to Canada’s North as a summering law student in 2002. He returned after graduation and has been practising law in the NWT since 2004. He specializes in the areas of Wills and Estate Planning and Human Rights Law. He also has experience in policy analysis and legislative drafting. He brings a wide range of expertise and life experience + a personal hands-on approach to his practice.

On top of his experience as a lawyer, Michael has worked as a geotechnical engineer, environmental geologist, and university and college lecturer. That work has taken him throughout western Canada and into the US and Mexico, and as far off as Papua New Guinea. He has been a registered professional engineer in British Columbia since 1989 and is currently registered as a non-practising member.

In addition to his busy law practice, Michael works extensively in the area of legal education:

He has delivered multi-day courses on municipal law and contracts directed at senior municipal administrators, council members, and senior municipal staff from various NWT communities. The municipal law courses covered matters such as the court system, municipal powers, administrative law and constitutional law, enacting and enforcing by-laws, municipal contracting, municipal liability, and municipal land development and regulation. Access to information/privacy was also covered in some depth. The contracts course addressed contracting principles, tenders and proposals, contract administration, risk management and ethics.

He has taught ethics, law and professional engineering practice at the University of British Columbia. He has developed and delivered training programs on trial procedure and sentencing for the NWT Territorial Court’s Justice of the Peace Program. He has presented on professionalism and ethical decision-making to professional engineers and geoscientists and he recently served as an advisory council member and session chair for a conference on Mining and Communities. His course on Applied Ethics in Exploration and Mining is available online through Edumine: Visit the website for more Click Here

For prospective clients not in the Geoscience industry, the above Edumine course, without any changes, is written in a format that easily applies to other industries/professional endeavours. Please contact me if you have questions about how it could be applied to your particular area of interest, or if you wish to have a tour of the course.

Michael has hands-on experience working with Indigenous peoples of Canada and Papua New Guinea and is fluent in English and Spanish. He enjoys travel, immersing himself in new cultural experiences, being out on the water in his kayak, mountain biking through forest trails, photography, various forms of yoga, and most of all, spending time with his life partner and elementary school-aged twin boys.