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Government Lawyering: Duties And Ethical Challenges Of Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin
Government Lawyering: Duties And Ethical Challenges Of Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin
Dalhousie Law Journal
Are government lawyers different than lawyers in private practice? If so, why does it matter? While these questions have been addressed piecemeal in the Canadian legal ethics literature, Elizabeth Sanderson's Government Lawyering: Duties and Ethical Challenges of Government Lawyers is the first comprehensive and long-form answer to them.1 As Adam Dodek hints in the foreword 2 and has noted elsewhere,3 the degree to which government lawyers have been overlooked in the Canadian legal literature is incongruent with their sheer numbers as a proportion of the legal profession in Canada. The need for this book is pronounced.
Indigenous Lawyers In Canada: Identity, Professionalization, Law, Sonia Lawrence, Signa Daum Shanks
Indigenous Lawyers In Canada: Identity, Professionalization, Law, Sonia Lawrence, Signa Daum Shanks
Dalhousie Law Journal
For Indigenous communities and individuals in Canada, "Canadian" law has been a mechanism of assimilation, colonial governance and dispossession, a basis for the assertion of rights, and a method of resistance. How do Indigenous lawyers in Canada make sense of these contradictory threads and their roles and responsibilities? This paper urges attention to the lives and experiences of Indigenous lawyers, noting that the number of self-identified Indigenous lawyers has been rapidly growing since the 1990s. At the same time, Indigenous scholars are focusing on the work of revitalizing Indigenous law and legal orders. Under these conditions, Indigenous lawyers occupy a …
The Judicial Regulation Of Lawyers In Canada, Amy Salyzyn
The Judicial Regulation Of Lawyers In Canada, Amy Salyzyn
Dalhousie Law Journal
The question of whether Canadian lawyers ought to be trusted to govern themselves has been repeatedly raised by the public, policy-makers and the academy over the past several decades. The legal profession has responded on a number of fronts, adopting what has been characterized as a "regime of defensive self-regulation." The analysis in this article complements and complicates this account by arguing that, alongside the profession's efforts at defensive self-regulation, there has been a steady stream of aggressive judicial regulation. The central argument of this article is two-fold: first, that courts have come to occupy an increasingly active role as …
Cravath By The Sea: Recruitment In The Large Halifax Law Firm, 1900-1955, Jeffrey Haylock
Cravath By The Sea: Recruitment In The Large Halifax Law Firm, 1900-1955, Jeffrey Haylock
Dalhousie Law Journal
The traditional view is that regularized, meritocratic hiring in Canadian law firms had to wait until the 1960s, with the rise in importance of Ontario university law schools. There was, however, more regional variation than this view allows. After an overview of the rise of large firms in the U.S. and Canada, and of the modern hiring strategies (the "Cravath system") that developed in New York in the early twentieth century, the author considers whether Halifax firms were employing these strategies between 1900 and 1955. Nepotistic hiring continued unabated; however, the three large firms of the period recruited young students …
Tending The Bar: The "Good Character" Requirement For Law Society Admission, Alice Woolley
Tending The Bar: The "Good Character" Requirement For Law Society Admission, Alice Woolley
Dalhousie Law Journal
Every Canadian law society requires thatapplicants for bar admission be of "good character" The author assesses the administration of this requirement and its statedpurposes ofensuring ethical conductby 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 Artistotelian 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 …
Law's Ambition And The Reconstruction Of Role Morality In Canada, David M. Tanovich
Law's Ambition And The Reconstruction Of Role Morality In Canada, David M. Tanovich
Dalhousie Law Journal
There is a growing disconnect and alienation between lawyers and the legal profession in Canada. One cause, which is the focus ofthe article, is philosophical in nature. There appears to be a disconnect between the role lawyers want to pursue (i.e., a facilitator of justice) and the role that they perceive the profession demands they play (i.e., a hired gun). The article argues that this perception is a mistaken one. Over the last fifteen years, we have been engaged in a process of role morality reconstruction. Under this reconstructed institutional role, an ethic of client-centred zealous advocacy has slowly begun …
Multi-Disciplinary Professional Practices: A Consumer Welfare Perspective, Michael Trebilcock, Lila Csorgo
Multi-Disciplinary Professional Practices: A Consumer Welfare Perspective, Michael Trebilcock, Lila Csorgo
Dalhousie Law Journal
Multi-disciplinary professional practices (MDPs) involving lawyers, accountants and otherprofessionals, have been the subject of considerable industrystudyand controversy in Canada and abroad. In this article, the authors evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of MDPs strictly from a consumer welfare perspective. They argue that, although MDP critics' concerns surrounding such issues as solicitor-client privilege, independence, conflicts of interest, and unauthorized practice are valid, they are often overstated and are, in many cases, encountered even today by professionals outside the MDP context. The advantages to consumers of permitting the evolution of such practices would, in any event, significantly outweigh such disadvantages. The authors'analysis …
Inside The Law: Canadian Law Firms In Historical Perspective, Douglas C. Harris
Inside The Law: Canadian Law Firms In Historical Perspective, Douglas C. Harris
Dalhousie Law Journal
This collection of essays edited by Carol Wilton' chronicles the changing character of Canadian law firms from the "golden age" of the sole practitioner in the nineteenth century to the mega-firms of the late twentieth. Most of the essays describe the changing profession through a case study of a single lawyer or firm, and Wilton has collected a representative sample of firms from across the country. Some of the firms remained small or disappeared, while others grew into full-service corporate commercial law firms of several hundred lawyers. Most of the essays focus on the personalities of the lawyers involved, their …
A Lot Of Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing: Will The Legal Profession Survive The Knowledge Explosion?, H W. Arthurs
A Lot Of Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing: Will The Legal Profession Survive The Knowledge Explosion?, H W. Arthurs
Dalhousie Law Journal
Professor Arthurs argues that with the growth and diversification of knowledge, the common body of knowledge that underpins a unified profession is becoming more difficult to sustain. The desire to know, the need to know and the resources to know have divided lawyers into subprofessions, increasingly defined by the non-lawyers with whom they work and the clienteles they serve, bound togetherif at all-only by nostalgia and some residuum of self-interest.
Lawyers, Courts, And The Rise Of The Regulatory State, R. C. B. Risk
Lawyers, Courts, And The Rise Of The Regulatory State, R. C. B. Risk
Dalhousie Law Journal
In 1883, when Dalhousie Law School was created, lawyers in England, the United States, and Canada stood at the edge of a watershed. Massive changes in the law began during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - changes in doctrine, institutions, practice, and ways of thinking. I cannot imagine how I might describe these changes in one short paper, even if I understood them all. Instead, I have chosen to talk about one large strand, regulation, because it is an important feature of law in the twentieth century and because it offers an opportunity to consider some distinctive characteristics …