More Shakespeare!
No, I was not the man misled by Paul Lasko in this case. But I have had bad experiences with him ..... he lied to me just like he lied to the other person. I tried to go to the Law Society to tell them but they didn't care to listen. He is a really bad man and this is the only thing I can do to tell people what kind of person he is.
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Dear Anonymous:
Winnipeg's legal community is really quite small - everyone knows each other. Suffice it to say Mr. Lasko's reputation precedes him.
We can certainly empathize with you. Our experience with the Manitoba Law Society has been it's an organization often far too concerned with protecting its membership rather than seeing justice done. All benefit of the doubt is given to lawyers. Unless you can prove your case beyond a shadow of a doubt - forget it.
In the case of the gentleman you cited, he was very wise indeed to get a trancript of the appeal hearing where the judge threw the case out because his attroney was a no show. Armed with that document, the MLS had no wiggle room and, therefore, had to reach a finding of professional misconduct which is tantamount to a slap on the wrist. Why not a six month license suspension?
If you haven't already, you might wish to read our August 3, 2007 posting entitled,
Meet Ratso, B.A., LL.B., - on his way to work to commit fraud?
It's based on an August 2007 Maclean's interview with lawyer Philip Slayton who has taught at Montreal's McGill University (13 years), been Dean, University of Western Ontario's Law Faculty and worked as a corporate atorney with a large firm on Toronto's Bay Sreet. He wrote a book last year, Lawyers Gone Bad: Money, Sex And Madness In Canada's Legal Profession which has generated a lot of comment. It's available at Chapters (St. Vital Shopping Centre - approximately $34) - a great read! Mr. Slayton can be contacted at philipslayton@hotmail.com.
To view our article, click August 2007 on the right-hand side of the main page and scroll to August 3, 2007. Here's what he said about law societies in the Mclean's interview:
Q: What happens to lawyers who steal? How is the profession regulated?
A: The disciplinary process of the law societies in this country is deeply flawed. Lawyers are disciplined for breaches of professional rules, but it's like so much in Canada: everything depends on where you live. What can get you disbarred in Alberta won't have much effect on you at all in, say, Nova Scotia. The first difficulty with the disciplinary system is that if you're a lawyer who's alleged to have stepped afoul of the rules, you're investigated by the law society. If they decide you're a transgressor, they'll prosecute you, they'll hire a lawyer to do that, and the disciplinary committee itself is the law society. So you have the investigator, the prosecutor and the judge all essentially representing the same institution. I thought in this country we had a fundamental principle, that the person who investigates and prosecutes isn't the same persn who judges.
Q: Is yours a widely held opinion?
A: I haven't heard people rising up to complain about this. In the United States, by the way disciplinary matters in just about every state are heard by courts, not by panels of the bar association which is how it should be. I think Canada really has to get its act together. Look at the reforms in the UK., which woke up some years ago to this problem and [adopted] quite sweeping reforms that largely removed self-regulation from the legal profession. Why in heaven the same sort of reforms are not under consideration in this country I do not know, except that self-regulation is regarded with quasi-religious fervour.
Q: What's the basis of the opposition to anything but self-regulation?
A: The ideological underpinning is that a fundamental responsibility of the legal profession is to help citizens fight the state. It's an important offsetting influence to the power of the state, and therefore cannot be regulated by the state, because then it will tend to become subservient to it. I just simply reject that. There are all kinds of other ways that you could ensure independence when it matters, and there are all kinds of ways you could get advice from lawyers without giving them final say over what happens. And in any event, lawyers only regulate themselves pursuant to legislation that is passed by provincial legislatures, which they could change tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk
posted by Clare L. Pieuk at 7:13 AM
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