Tending the Bar: The Good Character Requirement for Law Society Admission
Every Canadian law society requires that applicants for bar admission be of “good character. ”The author assesses the administration of this requirement and its stated purposes of ensuring ethical conduct by lawyers, protecting the public and maintaining the profession’s reputation. In particular, the premise underlying the use of the good character requirement to fulfill those purposes - that character is the “well-spring of professional conduct in lawyers” - is subjected to critical examination through the theoretical principles of Aristotelian virtue ethics and the empirical evidence of social psychology. The primary thesis of this paper is that as currently justified, administered and applied the good character requirement cannot be defended and must not be maintained. The secondary thesis of the paper, however, is that given the relationship - albeit a qualified one - between character and ethical conduct, a reformed version of the good character requirement can, and arguably should, be maintained by the provincial law societies.
Social media and social change lawyering: influencing change and silencing dissent
The Law Society of Ontario (formerly, the Law Society of Upper Canada) oversees the legal profession in Ontario, Canada, through The Rules of Professional Conduct (‘Rules’). All future lawyers and paralegals must adhere to the Rules. The Law Society sometimes provides guidance on sample policies informed by the Rules. In this article, the author closely examines the Law Society’s guidance on social media. The author argues that this guidance fails to understand how the Rules regulate experiences out of the legal profession and fails to see the positive possibilities of social media to influence social change, especially in ways that conflict with the colonial legal system. The author concludes that the Law Society must take a positive approach and provide some guidance for the legal profession on their social media use, especially around critiquing the colonial legal system. This positive approach is essential to avoid duplicating the systems and structures that perpetuate disadvantage in marginalized communities.
The Moral Obligations of Lawyers
Recent work in legal ethics has raised the question of whether lawyers, in performing certain kinds of actions otherwise criticizable on moral grounds, can escape such criticism by appealing to the role they occupy in the legal system. Such actions include but are not limited to “gray-mailing”, making truthful opposing witnesses look like liars, defending criminals believed to be guilty, and defeating just claims on technicalities. Often, the question has turned on whether the adversary system of which lawyers are members is itself a morally worthy system. And depending upon the answer to this question are the answers to a number of related questions. Of these, the most widely discussed is whether and to what extent a lawyer should respect a client’s confidences.