The "Manitoba Flaw Society?"
Based on media reports it would appear the Manitoba Law Society dropped the ball at least a couple times in the King-Douglas-Chapman legal fiasco. Here's what former Bay Street lawyer, McGill Law Faculty professor and author of Lawyers Gone Bad - Money, Sex And Madness In Canada's Legal Profession said about Canadian Law Societies in the August 6, 2007 issue of MacLeans Magazine.
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 intelf 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 isnt' the same person 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, whid is how it should be. I think Canada really has to get its act together. Look at the reforms in the U.K. 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 sort 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.
Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk
posted by Clare L. Pieuk at 3:06 PM
1 Comments:
Well, this weekend is not going to work for me in terms of having dinner. I seem to be affected by the plague, and Wendell is sicker than ever. What would you say to a date at least two weeks in the future?
Post a Comment
<< Home