Canadian Lawyer

April 2009

The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers

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L E GAL E THICS BY PHILIP SLAYTON neutrality is no longer enough," Canadian Lawyer, February 2009) argued that lawyers should take into account the values and well-being of their community. I mentioned "cause lawyers," members of the legal profes- sion who commit themselves to fur- thering a personal vision of a good society. The column didn't seem all that radical to me, but some readers took strong exception. A tax practitioner (who, he said, had been practising tax law for 30 years) e-mailed that the cause lawyer concept "is just one more method that those who propagate politically correct action will use to constrain economic [read the market] activity to redesign society the way they see it." After explaining that tax evasion (that's right, tax evasion, not just avoidance) was a useful social activity, because an individual makes better use of the income he earns than any govern- ment, my tax practitioner correspondent concluded, "I suggest you get your facts right or perhaps you even acquaint your- self with the facts. . . ." Another e-mail came from a senior and distinguished litigator, who seemed to be writing more in sorrow than in anger: "Perhaps one day you will write a column on the cause lawyer, often (or usually) single issue fanatics, who get so taken up with the cause that they have no shred of objectivity in advancing it, and thereby do a disservice to the cause, the courts, the profession, and themselves." Ominously, he wrote, "I wonder if your view of lawyer morality would be the same if you needed to retain a lawyer." 24 APRIL 2009 www. The 'thick' view of professionalism Y Column on moral neutrality hits a raw nerve with some lawyers. ou never know when you'll hit a raw nerve. My last ethics column ("Moral Why are people riled up? Perhaps it's because they think my earlier article implied that there are only two kinds of lawyers, cause lawyers and guns for hire, and that the first is morally superior to the second. It might follow, I suppose, that a member of the legal profession should sign on to cause lawyering if he wants to be good person. That's too much for anyone to swallow. Let me quote from T.S. Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: "That is not what I meant, at all." I don't think anyone wants to deliver the legal profession to single-issue fan- atics. Although, let's not forget that some of those single-issue fanatics have latched onto a pretty important sin- gle issue to be fanatical about — the wrongfully convicted, for example. But mag.com surely you can reject the extremes of cause lawyering without rushing helter- skelter to the other end of the spectrum, into the full and seductive embrace of the gun-for-hire alternative. Where might one reasonably stop along the way? Many lawyers find moral neutral- ity — objectivity, if you want to call it that — the most appropriate stance. The job of a lawyer, they say, is simply to represent the client; what the lawyer thinks of the client and his case, from the point of view of morality or com- munity values, is irrelevant. Everyone, no matter how abhorrent, is entitled to legal representation. When Ramsey Clark, U.S. attor- ney general under president Lyndon Johnson, joined Saddam Hussein's STEPHEN BOYCHUCK

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