Jean Jacques du Plessis is a Professor (Corporate Law) in the Deakin Law School, Deakin University. He developed and taught a 1-year corporate governance Graduate Diploma in South Africa in 1998 (this was one of the first such courses in the world). He also developed a Corporate Governance Postgraduate Unit (MLM706) for Deakin University in 2004 and redirected the content of that Unit to reflect the content of the first edition of Principles of Contemporary Corporate Governance. Jean also publishes actively in the area of corporate governance, with more than 100 articles published in Australian and international refereed journals. He is co-author of 10 books, published in Australia, Germany and South Africa. He is an Alexander von Humboldt Scholar and received the Anneliese Maier Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundations for a 5-year period (2013-18). He assisted the South African Government with its Corporate Law Reform Program. This resulted in the South African Companies Act 71 of 2008, which became law in April 2012.

He has been involved in that Reform Program since 2004. He was also the Head of the Deakin Law School (2000-02), President of the Corporate Law Teachers Association (CLTA) (2008-09) and became a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) in October 2011. Jean teaches in the areas of corporate governance, corporate law and business law. He was co-editor of the Deakin Law Review in 2012 and currently serves on the editorial Board of the European Journal of Economics and Management.