A professional legal advocate occupies a unique position, interposed as they are between the justice system on one hand, and their client on the other. Each advocate has a duty of commitment to the client’s cause, and must resolutely pursue the client’s legitimate goals using all legal means. At the same time, the advocate is an officer of the court and must help the legal system accomplish its own objectives. The need to reconcile duties to client with duties to the law comes up frequently in the practice of law, and pervades the study of legal ethics.

The balancing act . . . [more]

What should, and must, a lawyer do when their client persistently breaches court orders, either deliberately or recklessly, despite the firm advice of the lawyer that such breaches must cease?

While I am not qualified to comment on the US context, where such breaches by the federal government are allegedly occurring repeatedly and on a very large scale,[1] I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on what a lawyer in a Canadian jurisdiction should and must do in a parallel situation.

First, why does this lawyer have a problem, and what is that problem? A lawyer cannot . . . [more]

Sole practitioners in Ontario are required by the Law Society to maintain a contingency plan for their practice in case they unexpectedly become unable to practice law or meet their professional obligations.

Although this has been the case since January 1, 2025, the first time we need to confirm with the LSO that we have such a plan in place is on our Annual Reports that are due on March 31, 2026. Naturally, this month I have received numerous inquiries from clients and colleagues about these contingency plans.

As By-Law 7.1 is not always easy reading, I thought a column . . . [more]

Discourse on AI and the law often centres on the prospect (or lack thereof) of catastrophic injury to existing legal institutions and structures. Will AI tools decimate the legal profession, replacing all the lawyers? Or will lawyers who use AI simply replace lawyers who do not? Will our courts be overrun by hordes of robo-judges? Or is human decision-making essential and here to stay? These debates have proved remarkably resilient. Versions of them have bounced around for years, shifting shape as the technology progresses and our anxieties evolve.

I’m all for looking at the big picture and asking big questions, . . . [more]

Imagine having a civil trial, just two years after pleadings. To Ontario litigators this may seem an absurd fantasy, like a Stanley Cup for the Leafs or pulling matching socks straight out of the dryer. Four or five years, at least, is the status quo today.

And yet Ontario’s Civil Rules Review suggests that this fantasy can become standard practice. “Trial in Two,” for most two-party actions, is the aspiration animating its 281-page Final Policy Report, released in mid-December.

The Report sets out default timetables that would squeeze documentary disclosure, judicial conferences, and even pared-down examinations for discovery into . . . [more]

Imagine that you are a provincial Attorney General. The Cabinet, for whatever reason, has lost confidence in the provincial law society. The Premier asks you for options to decrease its effective authority in the self-regulation of the legal profession. She dares you to think big but also challenges you find a subtle way to achieve this goal.

Your first – and admittedly unimaginative – instinct is to change the composition of the governing board of the law society. You consider abolishing the law society entirely and replacing it with a new body in which elected lawyers will not form the . . . [more]

Given the high value placed on research excellence by legal professionals and consultants, I am surprised that stories continue to be reported about the lack of rigour exercised in the creation of work product by these professional groups. In addition to the ongoing stories of professional sanctions placed on lawyers for including incorrect citations and other issues associated with the use of generative AI, there have been regular stories about the high values for government report contracts and the use of AI to create them. Here are some articles on a report prepared by Deloitte for the Province of Newfoundland . . . [more]

Recently, some folks have asked me about my views on whether government lawyers can strike. A full legal analysis, including labour law and constitutional considerations,[1] is not something I am able to provide here.[2] I offer instead some reflections from my individual and idealistic perspective – which some may well consider romantic or unrealistic. This perspective draws on what I consider to be the spirit, if not necessarily the letter, of the rules of professional conduct,[3] given that those rules themselves cannot address every situation.[4] In doing so, I assume that such a strike would be . . . [more]

As 2025 draws to a close, this column looks back on three high-profile areas of development in Canadian legal ethics and lawyer regulation over the past year. It also flags several major court cases and disciplinary proceedings from 2025, as well as cases to watch for in the year ahead.

Three High-Profile Areas of Development

1. Rule of Law Concerns

The first year of Donald Trump’s second presidential term sent shock waves through the American justice system. In the spring, it was reported that U.S. federal judges were experiencing “unusually high threat levels” amid often vicious partisan attacks. Some began . . . [more]

Trouble sleeping? Try having your phone read the Rules of Civil Procedure to you. You’ll drift off to a soothing stream of minutiae, like sheep jumping over a fence. Very few Big Ideas will excite you. Most rules (not to mention the subrules and the clauses and the subclauses) are about what a party or court must do in a very specific scenario. For example, my civil procedure students always perk up when I tell them about Rule 20.04(4), which explains what to do if a summary judgment motion is deemed to involve only a question of law, but . . . [more]

As has been widely reported over the past two weeks, the Law Society of Ontario is considering eliminating the existing bar exams and replacing them with “a mandatory skills-based course with assessments”.

The LSO is currently seeking feedback from lawyers and the public on its proposal to replace the existing barrister and solicitor examinations with an online course involving training and instruction as well as both interim and final assessments by trained lawyers.

Ontario’s Attorney General, Doug Downey, came out strongly against reform, tweeting:

“An objective, written and rigorous test is an important part of proving new lawyers are ready

“Reserves do not improve with age. The longer a decision sits unwritten, the heavier it becomes.”

When the Honourable Deena Baltman (retired) offered this observation during a recent continuing professional development session for Deputy Judges, she articulated something that every judge knows but rarely voices. Her presentation, titled Managing Reserves, was pragmatic and concrete: write promptly, ideally within 48 hours; avoid over-reserving; schedule writing time ruthlessly; resist the temptation to wait for motivation, inspiration, or provocation.

Yet what has stayed with me is not just the efficiency of her techniques but the unspoken premise beneath them: that timeliness in . . . [more]