Reprimands In Alberta: “You Can Do Better”

A Hearing Committee of the Law Society of Alberta has reprimanded an attorney .

The reprimand in full

The reliance of a client on their counsel to proceed with matters with reasonable diligence and to respond to questions and concerns in a reasonably prompt fashion is something the clients have every right to expect of counsel, particularly in this case.

In reading the facts and the submissions of the Complainant, we have a woman whose husband had passed away and who found herself in a difficult situation, and that was compounded, to some degree, Ms. Hallett, by your inability or refusal to provide a full and prompt response to the questions and concerns that were raised.

That’s further compounded when the Law Society addressed these matters with you, and there is a lack of what is expected in terms of diligence in response.

So all of those matters go to two principal issues in my mind, which are our obligation, as a regulator, to assure that the public is protected, the public interest, and to also assure that the respect for the profession is maintained.

We have the privilege of being self-governed, which is somewhat unusual these days, and it’s something that we, as a profession, have to guard carefully. And if we are blasé about our obligations to our clients and the public, that goes to our ability to continue what I think is an important element of self-regulation.

Ms. Hallett, at a recent Jasper convocation, we had a conversation about ethics. And one of the things that I pointed out in the conversation was that we shouldn’t see our ethical obligations or our duties to our regulator as burdens. We should hold those as a badge of honour, as a privileged position in society.

We hold a position in society that is incredibly important to the functioning of democracy, and sometimes, in these days of I guess what I would refer to as running on a treadmill to pay our bills and to do the business of law, we sometimes lose track of the nobler aspects of what we do and the importance of what we do.

And it is for those reasons that, when matters like this happen, our members, and in this case you, Ms. Hallett, get called upon to come before the regulator who is required to say to you, “This is not good enough.”

And it’s not because we want to punish you, it’s because we’re honoured to be lawyers, and it’s important, what we do, and when we fall below that standard that the public reasonably expects of us, it’s important that we denounce that and say, you can do better.

Robert Harvie QC, Bencher, wrote the report.

Bencher Harvie reprimanded another attorney for unrelated violations.

The matters that give rise to these citations, which have been admitted by Mr. Randhawa, are troubling, obviously, or we wouldn’t be here. And the thing that comes to mind for me, in particular, is the fact that we were dealing with a self-represented litigant. And that’s a matter of some delicacy these days because that’s a growing part of what we do in the profession, particularly in family law.

I was recently in the Court of Appeal dealing with an issue relating to the court’s treatment of self represented litigants. The week after, the Supreme Court of Canada came out with the Pintea v. Johns case, where they talked about how important it is that we treat these people with sufficient understanding and respect.  And the concern in the Supreme Court of Canada, at least the representations made before that Court, was that lawyers have a relationship with the administration of justice which is rather unique.

The judges are all former lawyers. The administration of justice, to a great extent, is governed by lawyers. And in the Pintea v. Johns case, which was an appeal of our own Court of Appeal, the opening statement of counsel for the appellant in that case was, what this is about is how we treat insiders and outsiders – in that case, the self-represented litigant suggesting that they were an outsider.

The Supreme Court of Canada overturned the Alberta Court of Appeal in making an ex parte order against the interests of a self-represented litigant and affirmed the Canadian Judicial Council statement on how we treat self-represented litigants.

And I raise that because, when we send a message to people that don’t have lawyers that we can be somewhat tolerant of ignoring rules of procedure because we’re “on the inside” or we’re “club members”, to use a vernacular, that’s a dangerous thing in terms of respect for our profession and of the administration of justice.

And, obviously, as counsel for the Law Society has pointed out, the integrity of the profession and respect for the profession is a significant issue. And so, obviously, that is a matter that you’ve admitted and taken responsibility for, Mr. Randhawa.

And it’s a serious matter.

And I commented in an earlier proceeding, and I’m going to comment on it again. Sometimes, as a profession, we see our ethical obligations as an impediment to do the work we do or something that we have to do.  And in some recent discussions I had at a Bencher’s convocation, I commented that perhaps we don’t teach ethics the way we ought to and that the ethics that we hold, as a profession, should not be seen as something that we have to “tolerate.”

Our ethical obligations should be seen as a badge of honour that we hold, because we have a privileged place in society. 

We are a profession that separates democracy from totalitarianism.  And I don’t think we can overstate that. And I hold that dear, and I think our members need to hold that dear, that our ethical obligations, Mr. Randhawa, are not something that you should feel get in the way of you doing your job.  They should be something you feel proud of, that, as lawyers, we’re doing more than just a “job”.

When we let down our ethical obligations, we let ourselves down, and we tarnish that badge of honour that we carry as members of the profession.  In this case, you’ve let yourself and your profession down – and you can do better.

(Mike Frisch)