Law Times

PAGE 2 NEWS January 31, 2011 • Law Times Jagtoo fined $259 Kits long sold at stores Continued from page 1 as, sharp practice," Boychyn said, ac- cording to a transcript of the proceed- ings. "I'm disappointed in your request and I think it's an embarrassment to and an insult to the court and to the profes- sion of barristers and solicitors and your motion is declined." The trial then proceeded with the younger Jagtoo representing himself. Boychyn found him guilty of speed- ing and fined him $259. "It seems he felt that because Michael was a law- yer, that somehow he should be able to soldier through," his father says. "That's where there was a differential standard applied to him." Boychyn opened the reasons for his decision by noting the accused was a lawyer and outlining the circumstances of the request. A reasonable observer, according to Beninger, would conclude Boychyn "was predisposed to decide the case" against the accused. "A lawyer who is a defendant be- fore the court should not be treated any differently, and should not ap- pear to be treated any differently, than any other defendant before the court," Beninger wrote. Beninger said that if inadequate disclosure had been the only issue, he would have ordered a new trial. But in light of his findings about the ap- pearance of bias, he instead entered an acquittal. "This trial was a sham," the elder Jagtoo says. "It was a charade. It was a matter of just minutes before he got to the comments about sharp practice, for which there was absolutely no evidence. That's not something you lightly accuse another lawyer of." He tells Law Times he feels other rul- ings by Boychyn "give me pause that he does not have a judicial temperament." "This is not an isolated instance in which he has departed, in my view, from the principled decision-making," he says, pointing to the case of Damian Persaud, a 19-year-old who pleaded guilty in January 2008 to careless driv- ing and racing. According to an On- tario Court of Justice ruling, Boychyn ignored a joint submission of a $2,265 fine and a one-year driving suspension and instead doubled Persaud's suspen- sion and sentenced him to six days in jail for the racing offence. In 2009, Justice Joseph De Filippis reduced the fine to $465 and found Boychyn had erred in rejecting the joint submission without warning counsel that he intended to do so and by failing to explain why their sentenc- ing proposal would bring the adminis- tration of justice into disrepute. According to a transcript of the sen- tencing, Persaud's lawyer told the court the punishment was a "far jump" from the joint submission. "Well, it's only a very short period of time, and I've made my order, so officer, would you escort this young man to his new residence, please," Boychyn responded. "That language, in my view, is not judicial language," the elder Jagtoo tells Law Times. "It's almost cavalier and about something so serious as depriv- ing someone of their liberty. In this instance, I see no evidence of judicial temperament." LT Continued from page 1 knowledge engineers — practitioners who develop programs to automate and standard- ize routine legal work — envisioned by Rich- ard Susskind in The End of Lawyers? "That's where the future of legal service is headed, and we're trying to be the front-runners in the game," Carabash says, adding he's pleased to see the launch of ContractTailor. "It gives credibility to my web site when other people try to do it as well. It means there's a choice, which is great for the consumer. They will be hesitant if there aren't enough suppliers out in the marketplace." But it's hard to shake off some of the tradi- tional doubts about online and do-it-yourself legal services. Lawyer Pei-Shing Wang, who advises small businesses in Toronto, says he spends a lot of time mopping up the mess for clients whose agreements have gone wrong when they failed to hire a lawyer. "You're us- ing it at your own risk. At least if a lawyer does a terrible job, the insurance company is there to back it up, and you have some rem- edy. This sounds to me like a really cheap way to get into trouble." Christopher Caruana, another corporate lawyer with a focus on small and medium enterprises, says a client who asks him to look over a completed contract from a do- it-yourself web site may not end up saving much money. "If I'm doing my job prop- erly, I still have to go through and ask the questions to make sure they truly want the template they chose, and you end up in the same place as if they came to you at the outset. If a client sees another template, you may end up spending more time in legal fees to explain why they don't need that type of agreement, whereas if I made the selection for them, they would have accepted it." For Caruana, automated web sites are reminiscent of do-it-yourself contract kits that have long been available at bookstores. "Those who are going to use it online are the same ones who would pick up the print ver- sion at the local bookstore, so I don't think it's going to change my practice much," he says. But Cheng insists his service is a step up from bookstore contracts because lawyers draft every word of its content, while the web site guides customers through every optional clause, thereby "mimicking the information a client would get with a real lawyer." In fact, he wants to get lawyers like Wang and Caruana on board at ContractTailor. Cheng says he's looking for lawyers from across Canada who are willing to work for fixed-fee arrangements and sell clients access to the web site. The lawyer would then re- ceive notification when a client has created a contract and can begin work on fine-tuning it. He also aims to work with lawyers who have their own contract templates in order to automate them for online use. "This allows them to be efficient with their time because the client has done 90 per cent of the work, and the lawyer provides that extra 10-per-cent value added," Cheng says. Carabash, meanwhile, says he has found some of his biggest customers are lawyers who are either starting out in practice or need an introduction to a new area of work. "If they have no idea how to do a will or a lease or a prenuptial agreement, they'll hop online and ask for a template. They're using my forms to educate themselves in a nut- shell really fast. I put a lot of time into the research of my forms and I'm constantly up- dating them, so it means other lawyers who buy them don't have to spend as much of their client's money catching up." LT The best fit for success. Membership in the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) provides more than 37,500 lawyers access to the piece of the puzzle which enables them to excel. The CBA enhances your professional influence by providing the platform for you to participate in legislative and policy solutions in your field. The CBA leadership role helps you keep your edge by accel- erating your professional development through innovative tools and access to accredited professional development programs and industry leaders. The CBA protects your interests and upholds the core values of the legal profession every day in ways that individual lawyers and law firms cannot accomplish alone. We do this by leading the debate on fundamen- tal issues such as solicitor-client privilege, the Rule of Law, access to justice, and an independent judiciary. Join today by visiting www.cba.org. INFLUENCE. LEADERSHIP. PROTECTION. Untitled-2 1 www.lawtimesnews.com 1/25/11 1:04:32 PM

• Cover
• Stepping Up
• Parental Hostility
• Focus On IP/Trademark Law