Description
What options did Paul Bernardo’s lawyer have when his client directed him to retrieve hidden evidence? Where would David Milgaard be today if a lawyer hadn’t doggedly challenged his murder conviction? And what should a defence lawyer do when told her client is a danger to the public?
In this equally inspiring and troubling book, leading Canadian legal academics and practising lawyers draw on real-life stories – case studies, biography, and memoir – to examine the tension between ethics and the law. Whether re-examining high-profile cases, celebrating barristers who tore down barriers, or pointing out current injustices within the justice system, their stories are compelling and raise important questions about what it means to be a “good” lawyer.
Contributor Notes
Adam Dodek is associate professor in the Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of Solicitor-Client Privilege and The Canadian Constitution, as well as the co-editor of five other books. He is a member of the Chief Justice of Ontario’s Advisory Committee on Professionalism and is a former Governor of the Law Commission of Ontario. He is also a founding member of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics and a member of the Advisory Board for the journal Legal Ethics. In 2014, he was named by Canadian Lawyer magazine as one of the twenty-five most influential figures in the Canadian legal profession.
Alice Woolley is a professor and associate dean academic in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary. She is the author of Understanding Lawyers’ Ethics in Canada and co-editor of Lawyers’ Ethics and Professional Regulation (2nd Edition). She is a founding member of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics, a member of the Canadian Bar Association’s Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee, and a member of the Board of the International Association of Legal Ethics. In 2015, she was named by Canadian Lawyer magazine as one of the twenty-five most influential figures in the Canadian legal profession.
Contributors: David Asper, Constance Backhouse, Janine Benedet, Brent Cotter, Richard Devlin, Trevor Farrow, Allan Hutchinson, Micah Rankin, and Lorne Sossin
Editorial Reviews
In Search of the Ethical Lawyer is an engrossing collection of essays that seeks to inject a measure of humanity and empathy into discussion of some of the most complex and compelling ethical issues in Canadian legal history, past and present. In this regard, it succeeds, providing a perspective that simply cannot be matched by an examination of related court decisions or academic articles … Ethical Lawyer offers lessons and practical advice that today’s lawyers can understand and integrate into their own careers.
— Saskatchewan Law Review
There are many different conceptions of what an ethical lawyer is and what legal ethics are and there are tensions among these conceptions that make legal ethics more complex than I had ever imagined … In [In Search of the Ethical Lawyer], Adam Dodek and Alice Woolley have compiled a set of stories that illustrate these diverse aspects of ethical lawyership … I highly recommend this text … All in all, [it] is an indispensable guide for both the seasoned legal practitioner and lay user of the Small Claims Court.
— Canadian Law Library Review
