By: Alice Woolley

PDF Version: The Top Ten Canadian Legal Ethics Stories – 2014

For the last two years I have written up the “top ten” Canadian legal ethics stories for the prior year (2013 and 2012). This year I initially wondered whether it would be possible to identify ten important legal ethics stories. It wasn’t. Moreover, it is fair to say that some of these stories now justify the descriptor “saga,” making their third consecutive appearance on the list.

It should be noted that the ordering of the list is neither rigorous nor based on a precise calculation of each story’s importance. Nor is the “Top Ten” descriptor a claim I’d aggressively defend. I’m not sure whether, in an objective sense, these are the top ten stories and nor am I sure which ones are more interesting and significant than the others. But since “Ten Canadian legal ethics stories listed in no particular order but that I, for my own idiosyncratic reasons, think are interesting and significant” is not exactly catchy, I’m sticking with “Top Ten.”

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By: Alice Woolley

PDF Version: Ensuring Competent Representation: Know What You Don’t Know

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em

Know when to fold ’em

Know when to walk away

And know when to run

You never count your money

When you’re sittin’ at the table

There’ll be time enough for countin’

When the dealin’s done

The Gambler (Don Schlitz; performed by Kenny Rogers)

Being a competent lawyer means knowing your own limits.  Lawyers representing clients in cases for which they do not have the necessary knowledge and skills risk liability in negligence, being found to have provided ineffective assistance of counsel (in a criminal case) and violating the obligations of the codes governing their conduct.  Those codes define the competent lawyer as “recognizing limitations in one’s ability to handle a matter of some aspect of it and taking steps accordingly to ensure the client is appropriately served” (FLS Model Code, Rule 3.1-1(h)).  They further state that a lawyer ought not to take on a matter for which she is not competent and must recognize “a task for which the lawyer lacks competence” (Rule 3.1-2, Commentaries 5 and 6).

How difficult can this be?  Quite, according to some recent media reports.  While the facts as reported are not sufficient to support the conclusion that the lawyers involved acted improperly, they do at least raise the question: given the apparent disconnect between their expertise and their clients’ circumstances, why were these lawyers acting?  And what lessons might we be able to draw to allow lawyers to appreciate when folding ‘em is wiser than holding ‘em?

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By: Alice Woolley

PDF Version: Trinity Western… Again

I can’t stop thinking about the law society decisions on Trinity Western University (TWU). Part of the reason for that is the complexity and difficulty of the substantive issue raised by TWU’s proposed law school: the proper resolution of an irreducible conflict between equality rights and freedom of religion (I discuss that here). But as I spent the last few weeks teaching administrative law procedural fairness, I realized that the other thing bothering me about the law society decisions is the process used to reach them.

As far as I can tell, each law society that has independently considered TWU’s application for accreditation (or is likely to; Alberta delegated its decision to the Federation of Law Societies) has proceeded by way of a quasi-legislative process: TWU and other interested parties make submissions to a meeting of benchers, who then debate the question and vote. In April British Columbia benchers voted 20-6 against a motion barring TWU graduates from admission – a decision the benchers reversed in October following a referendum of its members. In Ontario benchers voted 28-21, with one abstention, to reject TWU’s application for accreditation (its process is discussed here). In Nova Scotia benchers voted 10-9 to make accreditation conditional on TWU withdrawing the community covenant which precludes LGBT students from attending.

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By: Alice Woolley

PDF Version: The Virtues and Limits of the Representation of the “Man-in-trouble”: Some Reflections on Jian Ghomeshi and Legal Ethics

The scandal surrounding Jian Ghomeshi raises a myriad of legal questions across doctrinal areas: labour and employment; the jurisdiction of the court; criminal law; and legal ethics. Last week on ABlawg Joshua Sealy-Harrington wrote a post commenting on two of the criminal law questions – what is (and is not) relevant to assessing a sexual assault case, and how the presumption of innocence can co-exist with the empowerment of sexual assault victims (Jiango Unchained: A Discussion of the Narrative and Commentary Surrounding the Jian Ghomeshi Scandal).

Here I want to explore the legal ethics issues. My analysis will be necessarily tentative; we do not yet have sufficient information to characterize accurately the ethical issues that the situation presents. But even that tentative assessment provides an opportunity to reflect on the role of the lawyer representing a client in trouble, on the moral significance and importance of that representation, but also the challenges that can arise in identifying its limits.

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By: Alice Woolley

PDF Version: Tweeter or Twitter? Teaching a Federation Approved Legal Ethics Course

This summer I again provided the Federation of Law Societies with the syllabus for my legal ethics course. The Federation requested the syllabus for, presumably, the purpose of verifying that the University of Calgary’s course complies with the Ethics and Professionalism Competency as set out in Table B of the Federation’s Implementation Report for the Approved Law Degree. As it did the past two summers fulfilling the Federation’s request left me feeling both uneasy and uncertain.

Uncertain because I am not sure what the Federation wants to do with the syllabus. Are they simply ascertaining that it is a stand-alone course on professional responsibility? Is this just something to let them demonstrate that they really are reviewing those programs they approve? Or are they going to review it more substantively to see if it addresses the broad variety of topics set out in Table B (noted below and here)? Will they tell me if they do not think I am teaching the right topics? Will they go beyond the syllabus to see what I am actually teaching in various areas? And – ultimately – is the status of our degree as approved at stake as a result of what my syllabus contains? How much freedom do I still have?

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