University of British Columbia

Robert (Rob) Lysy* is a partner in the Real Estate & Development Group at Cassels. Rob’s practice focuses on all aspects of commercial real estate including acquisitions, dispositions, financings and leasing. Rob has expertise in dealing with mines and mining lands including mining rights patents, unpatented mining claims, and other types of land holdings common in the mining industry.

A few examples of Rob’s work demonstrating his breadth of practice include:

• Assisting REITs and other operators with purchases and financings of apartment complexes
• Acting on purchases, sales and financings of shopping centres
• Negotiating leases for shopping centres, office buildings, and retail premises on behalf of major national retailers and tenants of all sizes and industries
• Representing clients on land assemblies for development or mining purposes
• Preparing and negotiating easements, reciprocal operating agreements, restrictive covenant agreements, co-ownership agreements and other complex property agreements
• Acting for lenders and borrowers in secured commercial loans and mortgages, and refinancing of commercial properties
• Acting for receivers on sales of properties on behalf of lenders

In addition to practising law, Rob is actively involved in volunteer work. He sits on the Board of Advisors of AIESEC Ryerson, a local chapter of the world’s largest student organization, is a director of Central Ontario Leadership Seminars, an organization dedicated to motivating and developing youth, and is a director of Enku Scholarship Fund, an initiative that provides university scholarships for underprivileged girls in Ethiopia.

*Services provided through a Professional Corporation

Jessica Lewis is a partner in the Litigation Group at Cassels. Jessica has a broad corporate and commercial litigation practice, with an emphasis on securities litigation matters. Jessica has acted for companies, and directors and officers in transactional litigation arising from shareholder disputes, oppression claims and class actions, including secondary market liability claims. She has also acted in a wide-range of commercial litigation matters involving contract disputes and insolvency proceedings, as well as competition law claims.

Jessica has appeared before the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the British Columbia Court of Appeal, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the Court of Queen’s Bench and Court of Appeal of Alberta, the Federal Court of Canada, the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada.

Jessica’s representative experience includes:

• Defending issuers and individual directors and officers in securities class actions, including cross-border securities class actions involving allegations of misleading and inaccurate disclosure
• Representing issuers and individual directors and officers in regulatory proceedings before the British Columbia Securities Commission

Jessica is a Board Member on the Peter A. Allard School of Law Alumni Association Board of Directors and regularly acts as a judge for the first-year moots at the Peter A. Allard School of Law. She is on the Executive of the Canadian Bar Association Securities Executive (BC Branch).