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battle. He still refuses to discuss the de- tails of the allegations but does say that the client he was ordered to pay still owes him $150,000. "My conscience is absolutely clear," he says. "Why would anybody steal $2,000, $3,000 from any- body? I know that intelligent people reading the story will say there's some- thing more to this than meets the eye." So what is it then? "I think the [law society] has to answer as to why they have done whatever they have done," he says. "Nobody in the law society has ever asked me to find out." Singh says he did respond to the law society "for years," gave them boxes of information, and told them he was closing his law office for health reasons. After his suspension, there was evidence that Singh responded to a law society forensic auditor in a March 27, 2006 fax, indicating that he had closed his practice during the fall of 2005, would attend to the matters of complaint, and would immediately resign if there was any misunderstanding about his status. However, Singh was told that, as a sus- pended lawyer, he could not just resign. It is clear, however, that he did not responded to numerous and varied at- tempts by the LSUC to advise him about the complaints, about the severity of the allegations, and the need to respond to avoid a hearing in his absence. Singh's side of the story raises as many questions as it answers. Was he simply too burned out to respond to the law society? Did he make mistakes that he still can't admit to because he was ex- hausted and couldn't cope? Was this a misunderstanding that could have been sorted out? It's not at all clear. What does seem clear, however, is that sole practitioners and small-firm lawyers face certain pressures due to the nature of their practices and clients, which some say are the reason they end up in discipline far more often than their counterparts at larger firms. In 2003, the Law Society of Up- per Canada established a task force to identify challenges that Ontario's sole practitioners and small-firm lawyers face. The resulting report stressed the "target group" lawyers form the back- bone of Ontario's legal profession, ac- counting for 52 per cent of lawyers in private practice and 94 per cent of the workforce in Ontario's law firms. Most people cannot afford to hire big-firm lawyers and the report found individuals overwhelmingly rely on sole practitioners and small-firm lawyers for most legal matters. These lawyers also handle the majority of legal aid cases, and they provide most of the legal ser- vices to many ethnic communities. Overall, the report found that small- firm and sole practitioners are general- ly optimistic about the financial viabil- ity of their practices and their ongoing ability to provide service to the public, but a significant proportion are also worried about their futures, and many cite pressures that exist because of the nature of their practice structures, pro- spective client base, and practice areas. They face limited ability to weather rising overhead costs and practice- management difficulties, and spend a significant proportion of their time on administrative work. Sole practitioners who do not share an office with others were the most dissatisfied and isolated. In fact, these lawyers reported the pres- ence of the highest number of factors that can lead to financial instability. In addition, the very nature of their cli- ent base leads to financial problems. Most individuals have less money than corporate or institutional clients, and this affects how much they can and are willing to spend, and when they pay, says the report. Almost three quarters of complaints made to the LSUC involve sole practi- tioners or small-firm lawyers. And while the report focuses on one province, "All the problems in Ontario are the same ones lawyers face through- out Canada and even North America," says Nova Scotia lawyer Patrick Cassidy, the current chairman of the Legal Pro- fession Assistance Conference (LPAC) of the Canadian Bar Association. Carole Curtis is a small-firm lawyer and has been a bencher for 16 years. She was on the task force and is also the co-chair of the working group formed to deal with the report's recommenda- tions. She knows what brings lawyers into discipline. For sole practitioners, the problems often start when they feel overwhelmed with too much work, or when they don't know how to handle a difficult file or client, says Curtis. They WHERE TO GET HELP B.C./Yukon Lawyers Assistance Program Vancouver: 604-685-2171 or 1-888-685-2171 www.lapbc.com Ontario/Nunavut/N.W.T. The Ontario Lawyers' Assistance Program 1-877-576-6227 or GTA: 905-238-1740 www.olap.ca Manitoba Lawyers at Risk Winnipeg 204-786-8880 or 1-800-590-5553 The Lawyers Professional Assistance Committee 204-927-1210 www.lawsociety.mb.ca/lawyers_at_risk.htm Saskatchewan Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers 1-800-780-5256, Regina: 306-757-6130, or Saskatoon: 306-978-4466 www.lawyersconcernedforlawyers.ca Alberta Alberta Lawyers Assistance Society 1-800-461-8908 www.albertalawyersassist.ca Quebec Lawyers: Le Programme d'aide aux membres du Barreau du Québec 1-800-747-2622 www.barreau.qc.ca/fr/organismes/pamba.html Notaries: Programme D'Aide Aux Notaires 1-800-665-5472 or Montreal: 514-856-6888. Nova Scotia Nova Scotia Lawyer Assistance Program 1-866-299-1299 www.nslap.ca Newfoundland Professional Assistance Program 709-754-3007 or 1-800-563-9133 New Brunswick New Brunswick Lawyers' Assistance Program 1-888-315-2244 www.cba.org/nb/resources/lap.aspx Judges Judges Counselling Program www.jcp.ca feel alone and isolated and they don't reach out for help when they should, she says. "It's like a snowball running down a hill. It just gets worse and worse and they start not paying attention to [a difficult] file or to other files in their office and clients start complaining." Sometimes, a marriage breakdown causes a lawyer to spiral into an abyss, www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com FEBRU AR Y 2008 33