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Full-Text Articles in Legal Profession

No Lawyer For A Hundred Miles? Mapping The New Geography Of Access Of Justice In Canada, Jamie Baxter, Albert Yoon Jan 2015

No Lawyer For A Hundred Miles? Mapping The New Geography Of Access Of Justice In Canada, Jamie Baxter, Albert Yoon

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Abstract

Recent concerns about the geography of access to justice in Canada have focused on the dwindling number of lawyers in rural and remote areas, raising anxieties about the profession’s inability to meet current and future demands for localized legal services. These concerns have motivated a range of policy responses that aim to improve the education, training, recruitment and retention of practitioners in underserved areas. We surveyed lawyers across Ontario to better understand their physical proximity to clients and how, if at all, that proximity promotes access to justice. We find that lawyers’ scope of practice varies based on a …


Legal Ethics Versus Political Practices: The Application Of The Rules Of Professional Conduct To Lawyer-Politicians, Andrew Martin May 2013

Legal Ethics Versus Political Practices: The Application Of The Rules Of Professional Conduct To Lawyer-Politicians, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Canadian legal ethics has paid little attention to how the rules of professional conduct for lawyers apply to lawyer-politicians – that is, politicians who happen to be lawyers. This article addresses this issue with reference to what Canadian case law and commentary do exist, supplemented by more plentiful American materials. It proposes a distinction between conduct that is politically expedient and conduct in which lawyer-politicians’ duties as lawyers come into apparent conflict with their duties of office. Canadian case law reveals three conflicting approaches to this latter category: that the duties of a lawyer prevail, that the duties of a …


Fitness For Purpose: Mandatory Continuing Legal Ethics Education For Lawyers, Jocelyn Downie, Richard Devlin Jan 2009

Fitness For Purpose: Mandatory Continuing Legal Ethics Education For Lawyers, Jocelyn Downie, Richard Devlin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The authors argue that if we want lawyers to be fit for the purpose of practicing law, and law societies to be fit for the purpose of regulating in the public interest, then it is incumbent upon the Canadian legal profession to adopt programmes of compulsory legal ethics education (CLEE). In support of this argument the authors: provide several reasons why Canadians might be concerned about the ethical fitness of lawyers and law societies; analyse several arguments both in supporting and resisting CLEE; suggest several strategies for overcoming the ethical indolence of the legal profession; and draw inspiration from recent …