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top newsmakers Former escort among LSUC's 2011 good characters BY MICHAEL McKIERNAN I t was a busy year for the Law Society of Upper Canada's arbiters of good character, but one woman stood out from the crowd of applicants with difficult pasts. Kathryn Smithen had a history of trouble with the law in 2004 when she made the decision to change her life. The previous 25 years included fraud- related convictions, bankruptcies, and an 18-month spell in jail. More recently, she had been making her living as an escort. When her daughter found out about her line of work in 2004, Smithen prom- ised her she'd change and applied to Osgoode Hall Law School. With emo- tional support from her daughter and financial help from a close friend, she graduated and completed the turnaround in June when she was called to the bar. Her call came just weeks after a three-member panel decided she possessed the good character necessary to prac- tise law in Ontario. "I've certainly got some aspects of my life that are not admirable and had a lot to answer for, but I'm really very privileged and honoured that the panel decided . . . that the sum total of my life experience surpassed my less than admi- rable moments," Smithen told Law Times. Smithen was born in 1962 in Winnipeg and was adopted by a doctor at just 13 days old. She later moved with the family to Ontario, where her problems began. Between 1979 and 1993, she was convicted of almost 40 offences, including fraud, theft of money and credit cards, and forging documents. The convictions culminated in an 18-month incarceration after the court ran out of patience with her spurned chances at rehabilitation. According to an agreed statement of facts filed with the hearing, Smithen would pay the first and last months' rent to landlords and then stay until the eviction process was com- plete. She also admitted she had stolen from employers and had lost her job for cause at least five times. She married in 1987 but divorced her abusive husband in 1991. Then between 1992 and 1999 and again from 2002 to 2004, Smithen was intermittently involved in the sex trade as an escort, according to the law society decision. "Despite her horrendous behaviour in the past, she has come to grips with all of the reasons that propelled her to act 4 December 2011 Kathryn Smithen was working as an escort when she began turning her life around in 2004. so badly and has made a commitment to herself and others to conduct herself with honesty and integrity," wrote Bencher James Caskey on behalf of the panel. Smithen now runs her own practice in Toronto devoted to family law. Other candidates who convinced panels they had turned their lives around included a convicted kidnapper and an admitted briber. Alan Honner persuaded a panel that his role in a 2005 plot to rescue a woman from a suspected religious cult and deprogram her was "an aberration." He served 15 months under house arrest for kidnapping and forcible confine- ment after pleading guilty in May 2009. His lawyer said the offence "was not an indication of bad character but bad judgment." Erik Bornmann, a former B.C. lobbyist who was involved in the B.C. Rail scandal and admitted to bribing public offi- cials, also got his licence to practise law after squeezing past a panel by a 2-1 majority. The majority was impressed by Bornmann's commitment to a legal aid clinic while he waited for the bribery case to wind its way through the courts. In another case, Ryan Manilla, a former high-flying law student, failed in his appeal of an LSUC panel's finding that he didn't meet the good-character threshold because of his actions during a bitter dispute with fellow members of his condo board. In addition, the hearing for James Melnick, a former teacher removed from that profession after receiving a six-month jail sentence for his sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student, has yet to wrap up.