Canadian Lawyer

Legal Ethics by Philip Slayton 'The companion of fools will suffer harm' I f you win a Nobel Prize for, say, chemistry, suddenly everyone wants your views on, I don't know what, maybe world peace. Why being a whiz at infrared chemiluminescence makes you an expert on nuclear disarmament is not clear but — such is the undifferentiated prestige of a Nobel — apparently it does. Being a lawyer is a bit like that, in a much smaller way of course. As a lawyer, people seek out your advice at cocktail parties about whether their pesky Uncle Fred 16 august 2013 www.CANADIAN should be put in a nursing home or if renting an apartment is better than buying a condominium, apparently believing these problems may have tricky legal implications. They want your opinion on this stuff because you're a lawyer. It doesn't matter to them that studying Rylands v. Fletcher 20 years ago only qualifies you to give advice about what happens if a reservoir bursts. Part of the explanation for the lawyer mystique is that issues once considered social or political or philosophical are now holus-bolus regarded as legal. This has cer- L a w ye r m a g . c o m tainly been true in Canada since enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. Few would have believed 40 years ago that judges rather than elected politicians would in the future decide questions like whether running a brothel should be against the law or if it's OK to help someone commit suicide. Once every problem is characterized as a legal problem, we turn to lawyers whenever there's trouble, any kind of trouble. Lawyers have become the universal problem solvers. The lawyer mystique is particularly prevalent in politics. It's not because many politicians and political staffers are lawyers, although that doesn't help. It's because when politicians get into trouble, no matter what kind of trouble, they inevitably turn to lawyers for advice. It doesn't seem to matter that what is being asked for is often not legal advice at all. What should a lawyer do in these circumstances? The answer is, have a deep sense of the limits of your expertise, and know when a question is a legal question that you can answer and when it is a nonlegal question you should stay away from. To stumble around blindly is dangerous. To go beyond expertise is unethical. Could a corporate tax specialist, who'd done nothing else for years, properly give advice on, say, Charter rights? Of course not. There's a recent, delicious example. Step up Mayor Rob Ford, chief magistrate of the great city of Toronto! When the allegations Ford had smoked crack first surfaced, around the middle of May, Ford said nothing for a week. Asked about Ford's silence, Toronto deputy mayor Doug Holyday said: "The only thing I've been able to get Oleg Portony Legal advice and opinions should not be for sale to wealthy clients just looking for a shield.

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