Dean Cameron began her career in private practice in a commercial law firm in Halifax, Nova Scotia where she specialized in civil litigation. While in practice she was a frequent presenter at continuing legal education seminars and bar admission courses, and taught Civil Trial Practice and Civil Procedure as a sessional lecturer. After ten years of law practice, she obtained an LLM degree at the University of Cambridge and then took up an academic appointment in Hong Kong. Prior to joining the Schulich School of Law, she held academic posts as the Dean of Law at the University of Windsor School of Law, and as a Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia where she served terms as Associate Dean and as Director of the Civil Justice Research Group.

Her interests in comparative law and legal institutions in post-conflict societies led her to Cambodia in 1996 where she worked with a human rights group training lay criminal defenders and judges. She has worked as a consultant on similar international development projects in various countries, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Mongolia, China, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Dean Cameron’s current research focuses on class actions, litigation funding and the administration of civil justice. She was a member of an international research collaborative group that published a book on comparative class actions (2016). She has presented on these and related topics at national and international conferences. She co-organised and hosted a conference in July 2013 on litigation funding, and co-edited a edited collection of papers presented at that conference. Other publications include Aid-Effectiveness and Donor Coordination from Paris to Busan: A Cambodian Case Study (with Sally Low), Law and Development Review, 5(2), 167-193, 2012, and The Price of Access to the Civil Courts in Australia: Old Problems and New Solutions - A Commercial Litigation Funding Case Study (in Cost and Fee Allocation in Civil Procedure, Springer, 2011).

Dean Cameron has served on numerous committees dealing with academic and senior administrative appointments and promotion, research integrity, reviews of academic departments and faculties, teaching quality and university governance. In Windsor she served as the Chair and a member of the Board of Governors of Legal Aid Windsor, the Chair of the Advisory Board of Community Legal Aid, and as a member of the Board of Directors of Hiatus House. She has been a Visiting Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Oxford.