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PAGE 6 COMMENT Law Times Group Publisher ....... Karen Lorimer Editorial Director ....... Gail J. Cohen Editor ........... Gretchen Drummie Associate Editor ......... Robert Todd Staff Writer ............. Glenn Kauth Copy Editor ............. Neal Adams CaseLaw Editor ...... Jennifer Wright Art Director .......... Alicia Adamson Production Co-ordinator .. Catherine Giles Electronic Production Specialist ............. Derek Welford Advertising Sales .... Kimberlee Pascoe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kathy Liotta Sales Co-ordinator ......... Sandy Shutt ©Law Times Inc. 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or stored in a retrieval system without written permission. The opinions expressed in articles are not necessarily those of the publisher. Information presented is compiled from sources believed to be accurate, however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions. Law Times Inc. disclaims any warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or currency of the contents of this publication and disclaims all liability in respect of the results of any action taken or not taken in reliance upon information in this publication. march 2, 2009 • Law Times Law Times Inc. 240 Edward Street, Aurora, ON • L4G 3S9 Tel: 905-841-6481 • Fax: 905-727-0017 www.lawtimesnews.com President: Stuart J. Morrison Publications Mail Agreement Number 40762529 • ISSN 0847-5083 Law Times is published 40 times a year by Law Times Inc. 240 Edward St., Aurora, Ont. L4G 3S9 • 905-841-6481. lawtimes@clbmedia.ca CIRCULATIONS & SUBSCRIPTIONS $141.75 per year in Canada (GST incl., GST Reg. #R121351134) and US$266.25 for foreign addresses. Single copies are $3.55 Circulation inquiries, postal returns and address changes should include a copy of the mailing label(s) and should be sent to Law Times Inc. 240 Edward St., Aurora, Ont. L4G 3S9. Return postage guaranteed. Contact Kristen Schulz-Lacey at: kschulz-lacey@clbmedia.ca or Tel: 905-713-4355 • Toll free: 1-888-743-3551 or Fax: 905-841-4357. ADVERTISING Advertising inquiries and materials should be directed to Sales, Law Times, 240 Edward St., Aurora, Ont. L4G 3S9 or call Karen Lorimer at 905-713-4339 klorimer@clbme- dia.ca, Kimberlee Pascoe at 905-713-4342 kpascoe@clbmedia.ca, or Kathy Liotta at 905- 713- 4340 kliotta@clbmedia.ca or Sandy Shutt at 905-713-4337 sshutt@clbmedia.ca Law Times is printed on newsprint containing 25-30 per cent post-consumer recycled materials. Please recycle this newspaper. Editorial Obiter Tackling legal professionalism It started over lunch at Osgoode Hall. The "it" blossomed into a Symposium on Lifelong Learning in Professionalism hosted by the University of Toronto Faculty of Law's Centre for the Legal Profession and organized by the Chief Justice of Ontario's Advisory Committee on Professionalism. The advisory committee came into exis- tence in 2000 when then-chief justice Roy McMurtry and former LSUC treasurer Bob Armstrong "thought there was a real need to promote professional responsibility in the profession; that the pendulum of law as business had swung rather too far and there was a need to re-establish some of the values that are traditional," Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Stephen Goudge told re- porters prior to the symposium. "The design of the committee was to promote professionalism throughout the profession and we have proceeded two ways: one to gather original material through colloquia that have been hosted by law schools around the province, and second by encouraging and being a catalyst for more teaching of professionalism both in the academy and throughout the profes- sion." Goudge said the progress within the legal academy has been "absolutely won- derful. It is now a major part of the acad- emy's portfolio … it's an underappreciated achievement that the legal academy has made." He added: "Kids are going to come out of law school with a much better grounding in professionalism than they had before." But Goudge noted the "rest of us need to pick up our game, so to speak, and as people move through the profes- sion the need to constantly be thinking about professional values is something that I think needs more focus. I think that thought is shared by a bunch of people and that really was the genesis of today . . . to put together a symposium where we could talk about whether lifelong learning in professionalism was as important an ob- jective as many of us think it is." So, what started as lunch, mushroomed into a year of planning. "It was a natural thing to happen," said Goudge. "In the beginning . . . the major focus was, 'How do we get kids started when they first enter law school learning about these issues?' So the focus was work- ing with the academy to get more teaching done in law schools. The momentum there is spectacular; it really is." But here's the rub: "You don't stop need- ing to know about professionalism once you leave law school." Goudge is right when he says there's "no point sensitizing them to the issues of pro- fessional responsibility just to leave them completely without assistance when the rubber hits the road and they actually start practising and . . . start hitting actual legal ethical challenges. So, you need to have mechanisms in place to keep us all think- ing about what the new issues are in legal ethics and professional responsibility, partly because the problems keep arising over the course of a career and partly because the world changes from time to time." Goudge added that when you talk about professionalism, the challenge is to "get that learning to those who probably need it more than others . . . that's a neat trick and we're going to have to find a va- riety of ways to do it. I'm far from having any magic solutions to this. All I know is the challenge is there and I think the sense of possibility is there as well right now, so part of today is to start us down the road of figuring out how to do this better." Doing better for Goudge means a cou- ple of things: "It clearly makes a difference for the effectiveness of the justice system. That is, if I think about what I do in my day job, I cannot do it without lawyers that exhibit professionalism in a variety of ways . . . [But] I think it goes beyond that and for me it has to do with the confidence the public has in the system, that's really the systemic dimension of it." Food for thought. — Gretchen Drummie Here's your chance to listen to the new audio version of the editorial by visiting our web site at: www.lawtimesnews.com T here have been no law- yers and no law students among the Canadian sol- Lawyers once had a military tradition That's diers and reservists who have died in Afghanistan since 2002. That's a change. A century and more ago, law- yering and military command were widely considered comple- mentary, two aspects of a gentle- man's role in society. Lawyers were prominent in the Canadian mili- tia — it was, among other things, a useful business-building thing. Young lawyers and law students tended to rush into the cannon's mouth whenever fighting loomed in Canada or overseas. Lawyers were prominent in the militia force from Ontario that travelled overland to assert Ca- nadian authority in Red River in 1870. Lawyers James Macleod, later commissioner of the RCMP, and Frederick Denison of the To- ronto military/legal family both saw active service on that expedi- tion. Denison, indeed, had also turned out to repel the Fenian raiders in 1866. In the Métis uprising in the 1885 Northwest Rebellion, al- most the first casualty was a law- yer named Skeffington Elliott, a relative of Edward Blake, the leading politician and founder of Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP. Elliott had ventured west from Toronto to set up a law practice at Prince Albert. He and other town leaders volunteered to accompany a Mountie force that went to con- front Louis Riel at nearby Duck Lake, and he was shot dead as soon as firing commenced. In response to the news of war in the northwest, so many Ontar- io law students rallied to the mili- tia force heading west on the new railroad line that the law society gave them an exemption for time under articles that they missed. There were others who missed that fighting. In 1884 a British History By Christopher Moore general was preparing to lead an expedition up the Nile River to rescue General Gordon, who was besieged at Khartoum. Young Ca- nadian lawyers got in on that too. The relief force commander, General Wolseley, had led the British-Canadian military expe- dition to Red River in 1870. He remembered the Canadian boat- men who had carried his force along the rivers from Ontario to Fort Garry, and he wanted some of them to guide his Nile boats. He called on his old aide-de- camp, Frederick Denison, who combined a Toronto legal career with politics and militia service, and Denison began to round up www.lawtimesnews.com Canadian voyageurs and boat- men from Quebec, the St. Regis reserve, and Manitoba. But when the call reached Winnipeg, things changed a bit. The local militia commander did not want all the glory to go to grizzled old nor'westers and riverboat pilots. He signed up the enthusiastic young bloods of the city, including a crowd of law- yers and law students. Denison was not pleased, and the lawyers showed little aptitude for the vital task of steering Wolseley's boats. But decades later there were sev- eral prominent judges and coun- sel across the west who could wear the Nile Star. As the long list of names in the First World War memorial in the Great Library at Osgoode Hall demonstrates so bluntly, militia service and volunteering was still a large part of the lives (and deaths) of young lawyers in 1914-18. Young lawyers with militia com- missions were among the first to go overseas in 1939 as well. But in the 20th century, law was becoming a profession, a business, and a skill, and losing its close association with duty, hon- our, and "gentlemanliness" that had been so much of its ethos in the 19th century. In 1885 and 1914, it was more or less taken for granted that lawyers and law students would be among the first to volunteer – if they were not al- ready militia officers committed to serve. In the 21st century, however, young lawyers are mostly commit- ted to their careers. The burden of military service has mostly passed elsewhere. LT Christopher Moore's most recent book is McCarthy Tétrault: Build- ing Canada's Premier Law Firm, published by Douglas & McIntyre. His web site is www.christopher moore.ca.