Canadian Legal Ethics: A Subject in Search of Scholarship

Abstract

In 2000, Adam Dodek surveyed the terrain of Canadian legal ethics and his report was bleak. Few Canadian law schools were offering courses in the subject and the legal scholarship in the area was sparse. Until the 1990s, there was only a single book on Canadian legal ethics. In the 1990s, however, a modest increase in interest in legal ethics was spurred due to the revision of the Canadian Bar Association's Code of Professional Conduct in 1987 and the Supreme Court of Canada's path breaking decision in Martin v. Gray dealing with conflicts of interest. The author describes a "first generation of scholarship" in Canadian legal ethics characterized which is largely descriptive rather than analytical and focuses on the ethical codes. The possibility of a "second generation" is reviewed positively by the author, welcomed by the publication of Allan Hutchinson's book Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility, which the author terms "the true breakthrough in the scholarship of legal ethics in Canada" because it was the first monograph in Canada to apply a critical analysis to the core issues of legal ethics. Dodek laments the dearth of empirical research on the legal profession in Canada and concomitant Canadian tendency to rely on American and British scholarship. He reviews several recent British works in the area as providing examples of where the scholarship of Canadian legal ethics can go. The article ends with a challenge to the Canadian legal establishment to begin to take legal ethics seriously.