Archive for the ‘Rules of Professional Conduct’ Category
April 23, 2013
Image via returntomanhood.org
Via the Toronto Star:
A Toronto criminal lawyer’s Twitter account has sparked outrage online after several offensive tweets were posted in the wake of the Boston bombing.
The tweets were sent last week from Twitter account @Dasilvalaw, which has since been deleted, though several retweets can still be found online.
“I pray for the suspects. May they slay the police army of satan. Death to all police!” reads one posting sent from @Dasilvalaw. Other tweets from that account contained vitriolic responses to offended Twitter users, including “am praying that u get violently raped. May cancer be upon u.!!!”
The lawyer, David Da Silva, 34, said in an emailed response sent Monday to the Star that he is “not the author of any such tweets.”
Asked in a follow-up email if his account had been hacked, the defence lawyer said he is “having this matter investigated at this time.”
Lawyer Nadia Liva, who sent an email to the Star saying she is acting as his counsel, said he is “very concerned” and “we are currently investigating the tweets, which were not authored by Mr. Da Silva.”
I don’t know Da Silva, either personally or professionally, but his website bio is generic: (more…)
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Tags:Law Society of Upper Canada, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, Toronto Police Association, Toronto Star, Twitter
Posted in Law Society of Upper Canada, lawyer, lawyers, Legal Ethics, legal marketing, professional, professionalism, Rules of Professional Conduct, social media, Twitter | 17 Comments »
March 6, 2013
I recently came across an ABA Litigation News article by Renee Choy Ohlendorf entitled “Ethical Limits on Rebutting Client’s Disparaging Internet Comments”.
The article discusses Formal Opinion No. 525 by the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s (LACBA) Professional Responsibility and Ethics Committee, which purports to define a lawyer’s professional and ethical duties in responding to a disgruntled former client’s “disparaging public comments” made online, after the lawyer’s representation ended: (more…)
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Tags:Attorney-client privilege, Bar association, California, Confidentiality, Ethics, Law, Lawyer, Professional responsibility
Posted in ABA, Breach of Confidence, client, ethics, Law Society of Upper Canada, professional, professionalism, Rules of Professional Conduct, solicitor client privilege | Leave a Comment »
December 10, 2012
Adam Dodek over at slaw.ca suggests that “Every Lawyer Needs a Guardian Angel“:
“The Ottawa Citizen reported last week that a lawyer who posted information about his own client online was caught in a police sting operation. The Ottawa criminal defence lawyer posted a PDF of disclosure that he received from the Crown in a criminal case against his client. The PDF contained blacked-out information and the lawyer used the web to seek someone to help him read the blacked out portions of the disclosure document. A man in Australia saw the post and contacted the Ottawa police who then caught the Ottawa lawyer in a sting operation. Read the Citizen article for full details.”
Dodek concludes:
One of the things that makes our legal profession in Canada a profession, and a great one at that, is the willingness of senior members of the bar to make themselves available to junior members of the bar for advice. I would suspect that this is true across the country. It is unfortunate that the Ottawa lawyer failed to realize that he actually had many Guardian Angels out there, waiting to help him out. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to find them. Now, hopefully others will.
This is not a story about a newly called lawyer with little or no professional experience: (more…)
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Tags:Canada, Hippocratic Oath, Lawyer, Ottawa Citizen, Primum non nocere
Posted in client, ethics, law, Law Society of Upper Canada, lawyer, lawyers, legal profession, Rules of Professional Conduct | 2 Comments »
December 5, 2012
Embarrassing.
Shameful.
Greedy.
Pull out your Roget’s Thesaurus and take your pick of a panoply of adjectives to describe this story by the CBC’s Kathy Tomlinson: B.C. woman may lose home over huge lawyer bill:
A B.C. woman stands to lose her home to her lawyer, who is moving to foreclose on her to pay his six-figure bill.
“My friends and family say this can’t be happening. There’s got to be a mistake,” Dale Fotsch said.
Fotsch got into the predicament after being sued by her former common-law husband, even though she won the case and the court ordered him to pay her costs.
“I won, but I lost,” Fotsch said. “I defended myself and now I’m losing my place.”
Fotsch, 54, lives near Pemberton with her disabled son and earns a modest income. Her only asset is her home and the 12 hectares of land it sits on.
“I’ve worked two jobs, and I have for the last 25 years,” Fotsch said. “When I was hit with this, it was just like a bomb went off in my life.”
The divorce proceedings were brought by Ms. Fotsch’s common law ex-husband Leigh Wilson who claimed a share of her home (presumably as a matrimonial home) following their break-up. Nine years later, the case resolved, but not in any way she expected. (more…)
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Tags:Beverley McLachlin, British Columbia Court of Appeal, Canada, Fotsch, Lawyer, Supreme Court
Posted in access to justice, Access-to-Justice theory, client, ethics, Integrity, law, lawyer, lawyers, Legal Ethics, legal practice, legal profession, litigation, Litigation Funding, professional, professionalism, proportionality, Rules of Professional Conduct | 4 Comments »
October 16, 2012
I blogged about CanLaw recently in a post entitled “CanLaw Lawyer Directory: Some People Never Learn“.
I received the following reply letter this morning from Arwen Tillman, Counsel, Legal Affairs on behalf of the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC): (more…)
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Tags:American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct, CanLaw, Law Society of Upper Canada, Lawyer, Lawyer referral service, LSUC
Posted in law, Law Society of Upper Canada, lawyer, lawyers, Legal Ethics, legal marketing, legal profession, Rules of Professional Conduct | 2 Comments »
Antonin I. Pribetic
