Law Times

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WILSON HOPE BALLS A percentage of sales go to Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CANADIAN BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION™ FONDATION CANADIENNE DU CANCER DU SEIN In support of / Pour soutenir la DD LT RX3RDC-05 Promo ad 2/20/08 3:27 PM Page 1 D&D 3x Firms participating in the Justicia Pilot Project will be asked to collect demographic information about their lawyers and develop pilot programs, such as maternity/parental leaves and flexible work arrange- ments; encouraging network- ing and business development; and mentoring and appointing women to leadership positions. The working group also rec- ommends the creation of a five- year pilot project involving prac- tice locums for small firms and sole practitioners. The locums would be listed on an online registry, and the program would help participating lawyers navi- gate the switchover to a locum. The parental-leave-benefit pilot program would get un- derway at the start of 2009. It would make available to law- yers in firms of five lawyers or less $3,000 per month, for up to three months, to help pay for expenses associated with keeping their practice running during a maternity, parental, or adoption leave. It's estimated that the pro- gram would cost the law society about $500,000 in 2009, rising to $540,000 at the end of the three-year experiment in 2011. That breaks down to about $15 per member. The working group also rec- ommends some collaboration with law schools in the initia- tive to keep more women in the profession. It specifically calls for schools to work with the law society in providing information on the business of law, types of law practices, and practising in diverse work settings. University of western On- tario Faculty of Law Dean Ian Holloway is open to working with the law society on the is- sue. But he says if any signifi- cant headway is to be made in the short term, change is needed at the top-management levels at big law firms. "There's no doubt that we law schools have to be part of the solution," says Holloway. "But if the solution is going to be found in anything other than three generations, then the law society has to begin at the top, has to begin with the manage- ment culture of law firms. "I'm not blaming manag- ing partners for the problem, but there's something about the management culture of law firms that is very inefficient in business terms." Holloway says part of the reason is that lawyers aren't trained as business people. another problem is that "the partnership model encourages people to be focused on the rel- atively immediate short term." Holloway says it can be dis- couraging for professors and law school administrators to see passionate female students jump ship soon after graduation. "what's frustrating for me is to see dreams dashed so ear- ly," says Holloway. "we know that, nowadays, most people will have three or four careers . . . That's the reality of today's globalized world. But what's frustrating is to see hopes and ambitions and keenness dashed so early in careers." Borsook notes that the law society's ability to solve this is- sue is limited, as it can't mandate that law firms accept its recom- mendations. On a practical level, she says, business and cost issues must be kept in mind. "we're running a business here," she says. "we can't have a business where nobody's here. People have to work." LT Experience will help, not detract Continued from page 1 Continued from page 1 Copeland says the past legal work McIsaac and whitehall performed for the government is a double-edged sword. "The advantage they have is that they know this secret stuff," he says. "The disadvantage is that they've been representing that side for so long, you'd think they might not do such an effec- tive job, but maybe they know the ins and the outs more than anybody else." another lawyer said the pres- ence of McIsaac and whitehall is bound to be a "huge issue." McIsaac and whitehall both brushed off suggestions their government work will affect the integrity of their duties as special advocates. "I thought somebody would say that," McIsaac tells Law Times. "I think it's nonsense, and you can use the word nonsense." McIsaac is managing partner of the McCarthy Tétrault LLP Ottawa office. Her resume in- cludes serving as senior counsel to the Somalia inquiry, which investigated allegations of bru- tality by former members of the Canadian airborne Regiment during a peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s. During the more recent in- quiry into Maher arar's rendi- tion to Syria by U.S. authori- ties and his subsequent tor- ture, McIsaac went toe-to-toe against Lorne waldman, one of arar's lawyers, as he sought the release of secret govern- ment evidence in that case. "I haven't been a member of the Department of Justice for 14 years," McIsaac says. "But more importantly, I am an ad- vocate in the true sense of the word. I act for my client, and that fact that I may have in the past acted for the Department of Justice is immaterial." McIsaac, among other things, is currently representing Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand in a Federal Court battle with the federal Conservative party over campaign advertising expenses Conservative candidates claimed for the 2006 election. whitehall, who retired from the Justice Department four years ago after 32 years ser- vice, was equally demonstrative about suggestions his govern- ment work should be consid- ered as a negative. "That's sheer nonsense," he tells Law Times. "I'm a lawyer. I fulfill my statutory duties and my legal duties according to my retainer and I don't advocate because I believe personally one thing or another. I like to think that I'm a professional and I do what needs to be done in a par- ticular case." whitehall and McIsaac say their experience will help, not detract from, their work as advocates. waldman declined to take a position on their inclusion on the roster of advocates — who have already been sworn to se- crecy over some of the informa- tion they were given during the training session two weeks ago. "Some of the briefings we received last week were secret and top secret," waldman tells Law Times. He, Copeland, and Ottawa lawyer Gordon Cameron, an- other advocate, note the new law gives those named in the security certificate the opportunity to select their preferred advocates from the roster. "They will be able to look at the background of the dif- ferent individuals and make a judgment as to what people might best be able to repre- sent their interest in the closed hearing," he says. Cameron, who has performed a similar role reviewing secret evi- dence in front of the Security In- telligence Review Committee for the past 10 years, says the view among lawyers involved with the issue is that another Supreme Court challenge is "inevitable," even with the advocate system. Despite that, Cameron says it is essential to keep some evi- dence secret, citing information from a confidential informant in a terrorist cell as one example. "You'd sure want to tell the judge that, but if you told the world, that guy would be face down in the river the next morn- ing," he tells Law Times. "I think we are going to have trials where information is received in the ab- sence of the named person and the public, and the only thing we can do is make them as fair as possible with something like the special advocates program." Newly declassified evidence the Justice Department filed in Federal Court against Harkat and the other four men accused of having past links to terrorists appeared to be based more on publicly available information than informants. In Harkat's case, the public brief the Justice Department filed after the new law took effect cited as its sources at least 49 newspaper articles, more than a dozen refer- ences to Jane's world Insurgency and Terrorism publications, seven books, eight web sites and five separate references to one article in a news magazine . LT

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