By: Alice Woolley
PDF Version: The Top Ten Canadian Legal Ethics Stories – 2015
Year’s end invites assessment of what has passed. For me, that includes reflection on the most significant developments in legal ethics over the year (Reflections from past years here: 2014, 2013 and 2012).
As usual, my assessment of significance isn’t one that I claim to be objective or right; it is better characterized as, “things that happened in 2015 I thought were especially interesting” (with assistance from Richard Devlin, Adam Dodek and Amy Salyzyn). Some things drop off the list that could have stayed on it; access to justice remains a crucial and unsolved problem in Canada, but fell off the list because it was more chronic than involving specific developments or discussion, at least this year. Others are on the list for the fourth consecutive year; Trinity Western’s law school was proposed in 2012, remains controversial, and law society decisions in relation to it are before several Canadian courts.
The one thing that constructing this list makes clear, however, is that the ethics and regulation of Canadian lawyers and judges remains an important and fruitful topic for our consideration: there is certainly no shortage of subject-matter.