Want to be a lawyer? Better behave yourself
A new campaign cracks down on lawyers who are rude and aggressive — with clients or even in their private lives
Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim
Young, ambitious and intelligent, Ryan Manilla was, by almost all accounts, on the road to becoming a first-rate lawyer. He excelled at Osgoode Hall Law School, graduating in the top 10 per cent of his class. He won a summer job in the New York City offices of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg, one of Canada’s leading firms. In 2009, he completed his articles with Pinkofskys in Toronto, where he intended to practise criminal law.
But in September, Manilla’s career came to a crashing halt. The Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC), which regulates Ontario’s lawyers and paralegals, denied his application to join the profession, based on its ages-old “good character” requirement. (Manilla’s appeal was heard last week, and a decision is pending.) It wasn’t a strictly professional issue that convinced the law society panel to bar Manilla—it was the young man’s dealings with his condominium board.
Canadian law societies have required lawyers to be “of good character” virtually as long as the profession has been regulated, but it’s rare for someone to be barred because his character was found lacking. Even the meaning of “good character” can be a little bit hazy: it isn’t defined in the Law Society Act, but it’s been described as having a strong moral fibre, a belief the law must be upheld, and an appreciation of the difference between right and wrong. The law society can wield that requirement to decide who gets to be a lawyer—and sometimes, who doesn’t, as the Manilla case shows.
In 2008, as board president, Manilla became embroiled in a dispute over an increase in condo fees, which he opposed. After sending unsavoury emails to his fellow condo board members suggesting they ran “the risk of being shot by residents,” he was replaced as president, but stayed on the board and continued to fight the proposed fee hike, boasting that he got a thrill out of making other members “squirm.” That December, Manilla forged a letter from a woman claiming to be a private investigator, making up allegations of kickbacks and other wrongdoing among board members—something the law society panel deemed “character assassination.”
In March 2009, Manilla, then 27, was charged with four counts of criminal harassment; further charges followed of intimidating a witness, threatening death, and failing to comply with an undertaking given to a police officer. In June, all charges were dropped after Manilla met certain conditions. He sold his condo, apologized to targeted board members, and made a donation of $250 to the SickKids Foundation in their names. But not enough time had passed, the law society panel ruled, to ensure Manilla was of “good character” and deserved to join the profession. In fact, he’d confessed to falsifying the letter just five days before his hearing.
Manilla certainly offended the members of his condo board and behaved in unscrupulous ways, but whether this should bar him from the legal profession is harder to say. “Can we have a good lawyer, and a bad person?” says Lorne Sossin, dean of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. “Is the law society required to govern virtue in its members? It’s a tough question.”
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Wrong Macleans when you say it is up to the law society to decide whether to hear someone. It is ultimately up to the courts to supervise the law society, known for dirty tricks, but additional problems do arise in Ontario as the law society is the ony regulator in a Canadian province that resides in the court seat. No other province would permit this.
But even in backward Ontario, anyone can ask a court for a order to require the law society to hold a hearing.
Canada has a long history of cutting off branches of law when they no longer work.
If you read the other posters you will see something about how this body, which may have existed too long and needs replacing. It has operated without fairness; or competence in some respects.
Time for Karol K. to deflect the issues. I may have made a good point.
It is very ironic that the law society hides caselaw so no one can do proper reasearch to appear before it, and then claims that this young man who acted badly and then made amends cannot be a lawyer. How has the law society made amends for breaching the Crimnal Code of Canada for engaging in criminal corruption by hiding publicly- made decisions that went againt the law society? These hidden decisions which may well make the society look inept, were never ordered sealed by a court or tribunal.
True, the adjudicators, some of which were embarrassingly inept, finally decided a few years ago to require elected bencher/directors (all benchers are sch. 2 corp. directors) to get some adjudicator training, but if their corruption continues apace at Osgoode Hall, clearly a little training and the cover-up is NOT enough.
Media coverage of this basic story would help, and it wouldn’t take much digging. Law society convocation minutes used to appear on its web site for Meb and March 2008, setting out the whole scandal.
Sorry – that’s February and March, 2008, convocation minutes.
Here the Law Society of Upper Canada voted to begin revealing those tribunal decisions where lawyers beat the LSUC discipline dept. before its tribunals, but only on a “going-forward basis.” It proposed to maintain the secrecy of all decisions favouring lawyers heard before this “going- forward” date, which they set several weeks into the future.(??????)
Of course, this scandal has had many distrubing developments since then, but this is where it all starts. Typically in Ontario the media is timid and does no research, and only gov. can uncover scandals – if it wants to.
I have not met a single person in Canada, who deserves to be called a lawyer.
In principle, I am an Officer of the Court. I yield to no man, no expert, no God, no lawyer, no judge. The law is my master and my slave. I oppose all prejudice, bias, distortion, deception and every judge and lawyer who is influenced by the ignorance that is responisible for producing every miscarriage of justice.
The force of logic is my only guide and the truth is the only thing that every bigot will oppose, tooth and nails, to protect the facade that the interests of justice are being served.
As long as lady justice stands alone, overwhelmed by prejudice, ignorance, bigotry and the inane assumptions that distort the truth, I am a force of logic and the only person who is in fact a worthy and legitimate, officer of the court. It is a hoax to think that lawyers are officers of the court who tell judges the truth, without evasion and locate relevant documents that are necessary and essential to the task of serving the interests of justice.
Lawyers are what they do, and as long as they are not punished for facilitating miscarriages of justice, they do what they can get away with.
I am a legitimate officer of the court because there is no compromise where truth and justice is concerned.
http://ahabit.com/rule.htm
Have you ever met a lawyer to deserves to be called an officer of the court? Please provide his or her name.
And there’s the challenge, provide me with the name and the telephone number of ONE person who deserves to be called a lawyer.