Lawyers behaving badly
By Kate Lunau - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 59 Comments
A new campaign cracks down on lawyers who are rude and aggressive—with clients or even in their private lives
Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim
Young, ambitious and intelligent, Ryan Manilla was, by almost all accounts, on the road to becoming a first-rate lawyer. He excelled at Osgoode Hall Law School, graduating in the top 10 per cent of his class. He won a summer job in the New York City offices of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg, one of Canada’s leading firms. In 2009, he completed his articles with Pinkofskys in Toronto, where he intended to practise criminal law.
But in September, Manilla’s career came to a crashing halt. The Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC), which regulates Ontario’s lawyers and paralegals, denied his application to join the profession, based on its ages-old “good character” requirement. (Manilla’s appeal was heard last week, and a decision is pending.) It wasn’t a strictly professional issue that convinced the law society panel to bar Manilla—it was the young man’s dealings with his condominium board.
Canadian law societies have required lawyers to be “of good character” virtually as long as the profession has been regulated, but it’s rare for someone to be barred because his character was found lacking. Even the meaning of “good character” can be a little bit hazy: it isn’t defined in the Law Society Act, but it’s been described as having a strong moral fibre, a belief the law must be upheld, and an appreciation of the difference between right and wrong. The law society can wield that requirement to decide who gets to be a lawyer—and sometimes, who doesn’t, as the Manilla case shows.
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Law societies under fire
By Kate Lunau - Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 15 Comments
SPECIAL REPORT: Critics say there’s a problem with how lawyers are regulated
Cora MacPhail doesn’t dislike lawyers. She has close friends who are lawyers; family members, too. MacPhail considers the law to be an honourable profession. Which helps explain why her dealings with the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) left her shaken.
In 2006, MacPhail was confined to a wheelchair for eight weeks following ankle surgery. The retiree, who lives alone in London, Ont., asked for help at home from a local care centre, but due to a mix-up, was at first denied (the centre later apologized, and provided her with services including a personal care worker). MacPhail’s son fired off a letter of complaint to the local MPP, and copied it to the centre; days later, the elderly woman got a knock on her door. It was the care centre’s “director of quality and contracted service delivery,” who questioned her and her son about the letter, she says. The meeting left her feeling uneasy. Weeks later, her son typed the care centre employee’s name into Google and discovered he was a lawyer, not a social worker, as they had believed. On Dec. 4, 2006, MacPhail filed a complaint with the LSUC, which regulates Ontario’s lawyers and paralegals. “He did not disclose who he was—a lawyer,” she wrote in her letter. “I trust you will take action.”
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How to pay for some justice
By Kate Lunau - Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 3 Comments
SPECIAL REPORT: Legal insurance could be just what Canadians need
Karen Fallis works on the assembly line at the Chrysler plant in Brampton, Ont., bolting on seat belts and “doing the same thing 500 times a day.” A single mother with two kids, her free time—not to mention disposable income—is in short supply. So when Fallis found herself embroiled in a legal dispute with her ex over child support payments, she was relieved that she belonged to the Canadian Auto Workers Union: CAW members have had access to a legal services plan for over 20 years. Just as health insurance covers medical bills, this type of coverage pays for lawyers.
Fallis called up the CAW Legal Services Plan, a law firm where lawyers work directly for individual members, not for the car companies or the union itself, and handle everything from property deals to litigation. (For family law cases like Fallis’s, the plan covers 12 hours of a lawyer’s time; after that, members pay a reduced rate of $110 an hour, about half what the average lawyer charges.) After a legal battle that lasted over a year and eventually went to trial, Fallis came away with a result she was happy with. It wouldn’t have happened, she says, without the coverage. “I just wouldn’t have been able to do it financially. I would have bowed down, and regretted it,” Fallis says. “Money is a huge issue when you’re talking about lawyers.”
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A closed society
By Kate Lunau - Monday, February 16, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 2 Comments
SPECIAL REPORT: While other nations are opening up their legal systems, Canada lags behind
When Saint John lawyer Barry Morrison agreed to take on the Law Society of New Brunswick, he says, “I was effectively suing myself.” Like any practising Canadian lawyer, Morrison is a member of his province’s self-regulating body. Even so, he agreed to represent First Canadian Title Co. in a suit alleging the lawyers’ group deliberately blocked First Canadian from the local land title search business. “For years, the bread and butter of private law firms was property transfers,” Morrison says. “Title insurance effectively replaced the need for a lawyer to do a title search,” offering the service at lower cost to the public. In 2007, Justice Thomas W. Riordon ruled in favour of First Canadian, scolding the law society for attempts to impede the title insurer. “Members of the Law Society are not happy with the encroachment on what has traditionally been the work of lawyers,” the ruling said. (The law society appealed, and a decision from the provincial Court of Appeal is pending. Neither First Canadian nor the Law Society of New Brunswick would comment.)
Across Canada, provincial law societies are charged with defending the public interest and the integrity of the legal profession. They dictate everything from who can be a lawyer, to how professional misconduct is punished. But the interests of the public and the legal profession can sometimes clash. A rising chorus of critics say that leaving regulation in the hands of lawyers has driven up the cost of legal services while Canadians pay the price. The time has come, they say, to break lawyers’ control over their own industry, and let some true competition and oversight take hold.
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An interesting choice of words
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 21, 2008 at 5:07 PM - 3 Comments
“It looks like Stephen Harper is going to be the last defender of Guantanamo Bay.”
That’s Omar Khadr’s lawyer, Bill Kuebler, commenting on the Conservative government’s latest refusal to ask that Khadr be returned to Canada.
It’s a not entirely facetious statement. The Obama administration is talking hopefully of closing the infamous facility (even if it’s not yet clear how). A federal judge in Washington ruled this week that five Algerians, held at Guantanamo for the past seven years, must be set free. Britain and Australia have long since succeeded in having their citizens released or repatriated. The Law Society of Upper Canada recently joined the likes of Amnesty International, the United Church, and Human Rights Watch in opposing Khadr’s American prosecution. And according to one poll, only 30% of Canadians approve of Khadr’s standing trial in Cuba.
Still here was what Lawrence Cannon said this week when pressed: “Mr. Khadr faces very serious charges. He is being held and it’s our government’s intention to follow and respect the process that’s in place and, of course, to respect American sovereignty on this issue.”
That’s in keeping with the rote statement delivered each time the government has been pressed in the House to account for their position on Khadr.
But the Bloc’s Serge Menard gave it another try today. And here was Deepak Obhrai’s response.
“Mr. Speaker, our position remains unchanged, because unlike many prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Omar Khadr has actually been charged with serious crimes and is in a judicial legal process to determine his guilt or innocence, and we support this process continuing.” Continue…
