It was just one of 13 recommendations from a working group looking to address systemic racism in the legal profession. It’s proving to be one of the most divisive topics in that profession this year, and appears to be sparking even more debate at Ontario’s legal regulator than when its board wrangled over changing the institution’s name. (The Law Society of Upper Canada will become the Law Society of Ontario on Jan. 1.)It’s the statement of principles. In September, the law society sent an email to Ontario’s nearly 60,000 lawyers and paralegals reminding them of the requirement to come up with a statement that “acknowledges (their) obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally, and in (their) behaviour towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public.” The statement of principles was a recommendation from the law society working group, Challenges Faced by Racialized Licensees, which spent four years looking into those challenges. All the recommendations were adopted unanimously by the law society’s board last December, with three abstentions. Licensees can either choose a statement template provided by the law society or come up with their own, but they must indicate on their annual report to the regulator that it’s been done. There has since been a flurry of open letters to the law society and op-eds in newspapers — mostly from white men — since the law society’s September email went out, decrying the statement of principles as a violation of freedom of expression. The requirement will be challenged at the law society’s next board meeting in December, while a law professor has gone to court seeking an injunction to stop the law society from enforcing it. A number of racialized licensees — the very people the statement of principles and other recommendations were crafted to aid — are speaking out, urging the law society not to backtrack on the issue ...
|
