Professor Margaret Kerr

Margaret Kerr and JoAnn Kurtz first met when they were junior lawyers in a law firm. Because their offices were side by side, they were frequently to be found carrying on entertaining and often risque conversations, especially whenever the senior partner walked by. When Margaret and JoAnn left the firm to pursue other opportunities (as they say), it looked like the perfect co-authorship was ended before it even started. During their years apart, JoAnn ran a general law prctice and started a...See more

Margaret Kerr and JoAnn Kurtz first met when they were junior lawyers in a law firm. Because their offices were side by side, they were frequently to be found carrying on entertaining and often risque conversations, especially whenever the senior partner walked by. When Margaret and JoAnn left the firm to pursue other opportunities (as they say), it looked like the perfect co-authorship was ended before it even started. During their years apart, JoAnn ran a general law prctice and started a family, while Margaret practised in the areas of legal research and civil litigation and honed her equestrian skills. They met again by chance when they were both teaching in the Bar Admission Course, each having discovered a taste for inflicting information about law on innocent minds. JoAnn suggested that Margaret join her in teaching law at a community college and the two were briefly reunited under one roof. Now co-authorship could not be held off by fate any longer. One day JoAnn's husband said to JoAnn and Margaret "You two could write a book about buying a home." "Of course we could," they said, tossing their heads, and they immediately did so. "The Complete Guide to Buying, Owning and Selling a Home in Canada" (1997) became a Canadian bestseller, and the second edition came out at the very same time as this book. Margaret and JoAnn made two strange discoveries after writing one book together -- first, that they had fun writing as a team; and second, that writing books is addictive. The world just didn't seem quite right without an editor demanding a complete manuscript exactly when JoAnn was experiencing a major family crisis or Margaret was away on business. So they startedchurning out books: "Canadian Tort Law in a Nutshell" (1997) (with Larry Olivo), "Make It Legal: What Every Candian Entrepreneur Needs to Know About the Law" (1998), "Residential Real Estate Transactions" (1998 -- JoAnn briefly deserted Margaret to write this book with Joan Emmans), "Legal Research Step by Step" (1998--Margaret retaliated by writing a book all by herself), and "Facing a Death in the Family" (1999). Since all this activity plus their day jobs clearly wasn't enough to keep them busy, Margaret and JoAnn also started writing a weekly column (Homeowner's Handbook") in 1997 for the Toronto Real Estate News. They are currently pursuing plans to write books on small business, family law, and cars and driving. The Canadian media couldn't help noticing the deluge of books; and JoAnn and Margaret have happily done numerous radio, TV, and newspaper interviews as well as author appearances. Margaret and JoAnn can't decide if they need their heads examined for obsessively writing books -- but you can be fairly sure that if they do have their heads examined, they'll write a book about it. See less