The lawyers object - Canadian Bar Association denounces Maclean's cover story
Date: Wednesday, August 15 2007
Topic: Canadian News
The lawyers object
Canadian Bar Association denounces Maclean's cover story
Macleans.ca staff | Jul 30, 2007 | 5:53 pm EST
The Canadian Bar Association has "condemned in the strongest possible way" the latest Maclean's cover story, claiming the article "paints a distorted, one-sided and sensationalized picture of the legal profession."
Entitled "Lawyers are rats," the article is an interview with Philip Slayton, an ex-Bay Street lawyer and former law professor, who recently authored the book, Lawyers Gone Bad: Money, Sex and Madness in Canada's Legal Profession.
In the interview (excerpted here), Slayton says his aim was to "extract general ideas [surrounding the legal profession]: the amoral nature of legal practice, the gross deficiencies of the regulation of lawyers, the sense of misery that pervades the legal profession."
He attacks the legal profession on several fronts. "It has become a business: interested in profit, not interested in making judgements, not interested in providing access to poor people or even middle-income people," a practice that can be "fundamentally undemocratic," he says.
"The average lawyer in a big firm practice faces the requirement to put aside whatever kit bag of values, principles and ethics he may personally subscribe to and concentrate on making it possible for clients to do what they want to do," he says.
Padding bills is “common practice” among lawyers, he says, while also criticizing the disciplinary process of Canadian law societies as "deeply flawed.”
In response to the article, the Canadian Bar Association has posted a statement calling the article “a broadside against the legal profession that doesn’t tell the whole story.”
http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070727_112012_3188&source=ct
[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on August 15, 2007]
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