RSS FeedCBA Joins Fight to Repatriate Omar Khadr
The Canadian Bar Association has announced that it is joining with a number of other agencies to fight for the repatriation of Omar Khadr to Canada.
Omar Khadr, a 15-year-old boy at the time of his capture in Afghanistan, has been languishing in Guantanamo Bay since 2002.
Though the CBA has spoken out against Omar Khadr’s detention in the past, and has joined with other groups to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay entirely, the Association has made the repatriation of Khadr one of its top priorities for this year.
In a statement to the House of Commons International Human Rights Subcommittee, the Bar Association explained that:
“Our commitment to justice is challenged where the individual is unpopular and accused of terrible crimes. It’s at times like this that we must speak out, and defend those rights. This is what the rule of law requires – that we recognize the rights of all, not just the favoured few.”
The CBA represents about 37,000 lawyers and law students across this country.
Conflict of Interests Taskforce Reports
The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) has adopted the recommendations of its Task Force on Conflicts of Interest. Background on the Task Force and their report can be found on the CBA website.
CBA President Bernard Amyot said,
Lawyers, law societies, judges and the Canadian public will benefit from the principled approach developed by the task force. The recommendations will contribute to the evolution of the conflicts regime to reflect changes in the practice of law.
Members of the Task Force, Scott Jolliffe, Simon Chester and Gordon Currie, can also be heard in a podcast interview moderated by Jordan Furlong.
Conflicts of interest have made headlines in Ontario recently, with some claiming that they are used as an aggressive tool to have opposing counsel removed from a case.
Tracey Tyler of The Star explains,
The payoff comes in putting an opponent to the expense and aggravation of fighting the claim and – if they lose – finding a new lawyer.
The Supreme Court of Canada weighed in on the issue this year in Strother v. 3464920 Canada Inc. Binnie J. stated for the majority,
34 When a lawyer is retained by a client, the scope of the retainer is governed by contract. It is for the parties to determine how many, or how few, services the lawyer is to perform, and other contractual terms of the engagement. The solicitor-client relationship thus created is, however, overlaid with certain fiduciary responsibilities, which are imposed as a matter of law. The Davis factum puts it well:
The source of the duty is not the retainer itself, but all the circumstances (including the retainer) creating a relationship of trust and confidence from which flow obligations of loyalty and transparency. [para. 95]
Not every breach of the contract of retainer is a breach of a fiduciary duty. On the other hand, fiduciary duties provide a framework within which the lawyer performs the work and may include obligations that go beyond what the parties expressly bargained for. The foundation of this branch of the law is the need to protect the integrity of the administration of justice: MacDonald Estate v. Martin, [1990] 3 S.C.R. 1235, at pp. 1243 and 1265. “[I]t is of high public importance that public confidence in that integrity be maintained”: R. v. Neil, [2002] 3 S.C.R. 631, 2002 SCC 70, at para. 12.
35 Fiduciary responsibilities include the duty of loyalty, of which an element is the avoidance of conflicts of interest, as set out in the jurisprudence and reflected in the Rules of Practice of The Law Society of British Columbia. As the late Hon. Michel Proulx and David Layton state, “[t]he leitmotif of conflict of interest is the broader duty of loyalty”: Ethics and Canadian Criminal Law (2001), at p. 287.
The issue appears to be a particular problem in specialized areas of law such as intellectual property and Aboriginal law.
100 Tips and Resources to be a Happy, Successful Lawyer
Is it possible to be both happy and successful in law?
Laura Milligan of Job Profiles thinks so. They wrote in last night and brought an article to our attention that provides tips and other resources that can help lawyers in their careers.
They suggest that lawyers join associations. For us it would be the Canadian Bar Association, as well as the provincial organization where you live. There are also practice focused groups like the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association and the Canadian Defence Lawyers.
To keep abreast of changes in the field, they list a bunch of lawyer blogs. Of course the best way to do that is to write a blog yourself, which keeps you in the loop and adds your voice to the discussion.
Social media is also something they mention, citing Kevin O’Keefe’s article from earlier this year that says that Law Firms Should Learn to Love Social Media Sites.
Love is a strong word. I’ve got my hand it dozens of social media sites, but I only use a handful because the rest are too time consuming, redundant, and have limited scope. FriendFeed has become a very useful tool because it aggregates several social media sites for you.
The newest site I’m trying out is Martindale by Lexis-Nexis. Given it’s specific legal focus it might prove useful, but has limited functions to students, who can’t create public profiles or be listed in the search functions. Law students marketing themselves is still something new to the industry. Firms might be interested in getting listed on Lawyers.com’s new site, Canadian-Lawyers.
Continuing education is hardly a concern for law students. But I still attend a number of CE events to broaden my horizons, gain perspectives from practitioners rather than academics, and network with members of the bar.
Avoiding burnout and creating a work/life balance should start now, while we are in school. Unfortunately the most successful students are too often the ones with the least balance. And although it might be a calculated sacrifice at this point in their career, it’s not sustainable in the long-term.
Jobs, and the fear of not getting one, is probably the reason why law students burn themselves out. The number of positions out there should provide some assurances that there are positions for everyone. Last month we were contacted by Stephen Fine, who provides other options at www.AlternativeLawJob.com. We plan on doing an interview with him in the future to explore this further.
References, referrals, humour are also important to add to the mix, and Milligan provides a smattering of them. But they also provide resources for new lawyers and students, how to get out of debt, and how to fight discrimination.
Jordan Furlong has also written to us in the past, and pointed out resources for Canadian law students and lawyers in creating work/life balance.
But will all of this help make lawyers, as Hon. Patrick J. Schiltz said, “happy, healthy and ethical?”
You tell us.
Seven Years of Law School. Seriously.
A few months ago I was asking for some career advice from Jordan Furlong, of the CBA’s National Magazine.
My concerns over bait-and-switch tactics by law firms and the enormously high turnover in some had me thinking.
We compared law to other professional degrees, and the pros and cons of each. Jordan suggested that I look at law as an investment in a personal skills enhancement project,
He responded at that time by saying,
I think a better way to look at it might be to consider the first seven years in the law to be the admissions process: three in school, one in articling, three in post-articling (most often, in a large law firm). At the end of those seven years, you’ve accumulated at least a minimal set of knowledge, skills and networks, you’ve paid down a chunk of your investment debt, and you can actually go out and start your real career. Viewed in that light, the working conditions for new lawyers seem a little more palatable, because new lawyers don’t see the harrowing associate experience as the norm or the template for the rest of their careers; they see it as an extended work term, co-op placement, apprenticeship, whatever, that has no particular bearing on where they’ll go next. If we could ever establish that way of thinking in the profession, we’d have much calmer and happier new grads.
Our conversation grew into an article that he posted on his site.
It proved so popular that the Young Lawyer’s Edition of the Addendum published it this month.
Perhaps it’s slightly disheartening to think of even more years ahead of me. But at the same time it might bring greater satisfaction and purpose to the challenges ahead.
Podcast Feeds
