Emilie Cox (she/her/hers) is an associate in the Litigation and Aboriginal Groups at Cassels. Emilie maintains a broad Aboriginal law practice, representing clients on matters pertaining to Indigenous-Crown relations and Indigenous rights. Emilie advises clients on matters involving Indigenous self-governance, resource development and Indigenous rights, Indigenous-Crown relations, regulatory and constitutional issues. She has also acted on behalf of federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments and agencies on Aboriginal and project-related regulatory and environmental matters.
Emilie has extensive advocacy experience, including appellate litigation, commercial and international arbitration, administrative law, constitutional law, Aboriginal law and oil and gas litigation. Emilie appeared before the Federal Court of Canada, the Court of Queen’s Bench and Court of Appeal of Alberta, the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, and the Provincial Courts of Alberta and Nova Scotia. Outside of the office, Emilie has devoted significant hours to pro bono work, including working to further LGBTQ+ rights in Alberta.
Representative work includes:
- Advising Indigenous clients on claims involving breach of fiduciary duties and bad faith dealings
- Advising Indigenous and government clients on Aboriginal title and consultation matters
- Representing a mining company on its Indigenous consultation in the environmental assessment process in Ontario
- Successfully representing a public-interest organization to obtain intervenor status in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench and the Court of Appeal of Alberta on a matter concerning the constitutionality of an Alberta law that facilitates Gay-Straight Alliances and protects the privacy of LGBTQ+ youth (reported decisions at T. v Alberta, 2018 ABQB 496 and P.T. v Alberta, 2019 ABCA 158)
- Successfully representing a large integrated energy company in a judicial review application involving the calculation of oil sands royalties
- Successfully representing an insured to obtain a C$362-million award in a private arbitration against its insurer pursuant to a political risk insurance policy
- Successfully representing a large energy services company in a five-week intellectual property trial in the Federal Court of Canada, involving both patent infringement and patent validity issues (Packers Plus Energy Services Inc. v. Essential Energy Services Ltd.)
Prior to joining Cassels, Emilie clerked at the Alberta Court of Queen’s bench and was an associate at another national law firm before moving in-house at an integrated energy company based in Calgary.
