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OP I N ION BY PHILIP SLAYTON LEGAL ETHICS The lure of the pen Writing one's memoirs or even a work of fiction may be touched by rules of professional conduct and require some caution. W ords are the stuff of a prac- tising lawyer's life. Solicitors pour them onto paper in legal opinions, lawyers' let- ters, and memoranda. Barristers blovi- ate in the courtroom. Words, words, words. (In light of this, it's surprising how bad with language many lawyers are — we can be logorrheic, pompous, and obscure.) Sometimes lawyers write books about the law, perhaps textbooks dry as dust, biographies of semi-famous judg- es, or books about legal history. Bold members of the bar may turn to fiction, drawing from their legal experience, perhaps writing a roman à clef or two. William Deverell and Robert Rotenberg are the best-known Canadian examples. Deverell, an erstwhile criminal lawyer, has written a large number of nov- els, many featuring a criminal lawyer called Arthur Beauchamp. Rotenberg, a Toronto criminal lawyer who still prac- tises full time, has recently published two well-received fictions of crime and the law, with more promised. Some lawyers, when they retire, decide to write their memoirs. Generally this is not a good idea. Whatever the book's quality, the potential readership is tiny. And, let's face it, most legal memoirs are deathly dull. One of the first book reviews I ever wrote, for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1970, was of Far From Humdrum: A Lawyer's Life by William Charles Crocker, a promi- nent English barrister. The review con- cluded: "This account of a lawyer's life is somewhat trivial and uninspiring and — dare one say it? — humdrum." When it comes to legal memoirs, things have not improved much since I wrote those words. It is reported that when a brain 16 OCTO BER 2011 www. CANADIAN Lawyermag.com surgeon told Margaret Atwood at a din- ner party, "After I retire from medicine, I'm going to write," she replied, "When I retire from writing, I'm going to be a brain surgeon." If you must pick up a pen, be care- ful. There's an ethical issue lurking. Whatever kind of legal book you're writing, you have to be circumspect about disclosing, directly or indirectly, anything that actually happened in your professional life. A distinguished law- yer who has retired and is writing his memoirs recently brought the rules to my attention. (This guy's memoirs, I am sure, will be excellent, the exception that proves the rule.) In Ontario, law society Rule of Professional Conduct 2.03(1) prohibits a lawyer from disclosing anything about "the business and affairs of the client acquired in the course of the profes- sional relationship" without the client's Kim roseN