When a stranger breaks the rules in a scary way, it is always tempting to banish them.

This old-fashioned word might suggest disgraced medieval nobles driven from of their kingdoms. But banishment occurs whenever a person is cast out from what used to be their home or social group.

A few examples of modern-day banishment:

• Expelling high school students who have committed acts of violence is a straightforward way to show “zero tolerance” for their misbehaviour. Doing so is often welcomed by other students and parents who have suffered from the misbehaviour.
• If unhoused people are or might

Civility and its importance are contested in the Canadian legal profession and the Canadian legal academy. [1] Moreover, civility and the broader concept of professionalism have a shameful history as exclusionary concepts with significant negative impact on the ability of members of equity-seeking groups to join the legal profession and succeed in the practice of law. [2] The contemporary complexities of civility and professionalism remain problematic.[3] And even at its pinnacle, the civility movement had its critics as well as its supporters.[4] In the aftermath of Law Society of Upper Canada v Groia, the movement may not . . . [more]

Lawyers should “encourage public respect for and try to improve the administration of justice,” according to our code of professional conduct.

The “try to improve” part is fairly straightforward. When we see problems in our legal system we should try to fix them, whether or not we personally or our clients are affected. We should be part of the solutions, not part of the problems.

But what about “encouraging public respect” for the justice system? Improving it is one way to encourage respect for it: by making it more worthy of respect. But I don’t think that’s all the . . . [more]

What happened in Canadian lawyers’ ethics and legal services regulation in 2024? This column looks back on three high-profile areas of development. It also flags several major court cases and disciplinary proceedings from 2024, as well as cases to watch for the year ahead.

Three High-Profile Areas of Development

1. Generative AI and the delivery of legal services

AI was one of the big stories in 2023 and continued to be big in 2024.

The year started with a cautionary note: there were headlines about a British Columbia lawyer who had included non-existent cases – provided to her by ChatGPT . . . [more]

I typically write about lawyer discipline, not judicial discipline. But to my surprise, there seems to have been virtually no attention to the important decision of the Ontario Divisional Court in Gibbon v Justices of the Peace Review Council in the year and a half since it was released.[1]

Gibbon was an Ontario Justice of the Peace who had attempted to influence Highway Traffic Act proceedings against her son, specifically by contacting the assigned prosecutor and by inviting the assigned Justice of the Peace to dinner.[2] While the panel of the Justices of the Peace Review Council was . . . [more]

In “The Lawyer as Friend,” a famous 1976 law review article, Charles Fried proposed that a lawyer should act as a “special-purpose friend” to each of his or her clients. Within the bounds of the retainer, Fried argued, the lawyer must adopt the interests of the client as their own — just as a friend would.

This analogy helps clarify why conflicts of interest are so toxic to lawyer-client relationships. A conflict of interest usually arises because a lawyer’s loyalty to a client is undermined by the their work for other clients, or by the lawyer’s own personal interests. . . . [more]

As a person who articled and practiced with a provincial government, and now teaches at a law school that defines itself in part by “the Weldon tradition of unselfish public service”, I encourage my students to consider a career of legal practice in the public service – but to do so with their eyes open. While I have written elsewhere about how government practice is different than other legal practice,[1] here I want to discuss the important but sometimes overlooked difference between the concepts of “social justice” and “public service”.

There is plenty right, and nothing wrong, with the . . . [more]

Canadian courts are concerned about AI. They are concerned that litigants may misuse AI and attempt to introduce fake cases or deepfake evidence into court proceedings. They are also concerned about AI potentially usurping judges’ decision-making role and thereby undermining the proper administration of justice.

These concerns don’t merely exist in the ether – they have become embedded in roughly a dozen AI practice directions or notices from individual Canadian courts addressing the use of AI by litigants (see, e.g. here and here), as well as in recent AI guidance from the Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) and the Action . . . [more]

The Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) has issued ethical guidelines for judges on the use of social media. These guidelines could be a useful template for updating or expanding codes of ethics for tribunal members. In this column I identify some of the key parts of the guidelines as well as some of the shortcomings.

The CJC defines social media, using the Oxford English Dictionary definition as its foundation:

 … social media is defined as “websites and applications which enable users to [access], create and share content or to participate in social networking.” This definition encompasses a wide variety of tools,

Why are some restaurants great, while others are so lousy? The great ones don’t usually have better ingredients in the kitchen, or better written policies, or even more talented people.

Usually, they have better culture. The folks leading and working in great restaurants have developed expectations, attitudes, and social practices that produce terrific results, night after night.

What if the same is true of justice systems? Maybe culture is the reason why some courts, tribunals, and segments of the bar consistently produce substantively just outcomes after processes that are quick, affordable, and procedurally fair. And maybe culture is the . . . [more]

The decision of the Law Society of Alberta in Law Society of Alberta v Shandro (2024 ABLS 14) has received media attention, but primarily for the result. In the process of dismissing three citations against politician Tyler Shandro, the Hearing Committee panel makes some important points about politicians who happen to be lawyers – points that are worthy of more attention independent of the result in the specific matter.

It seems intuitive that law society regulation, including complaints and discipline, could be ‘weaponized’ or otherwise abused as a tool against lawyer-politicians.[1] At the same time, it does . . . [more]

At the LSBC’s AGM tomorrow, several member resolutions will be up for a vote. Among them is a controversial resolution (Resolution 3) submitted by two BC lawyers that calls for changes to certain language in the LSBC’s Indigenous Intercultural Course. The language at issue references an unmarked burial site at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Various legal organizations have condemned Resolution 3 as being, among other things, “alarming Residential School denialism”, “an attack on the principles of Truth and Reconciliation”, an “insidious attempt to distort history” and as “undermin[ing] engagement with Indigenous communities”.

Resolution 3 follows . . . [more]