“The [boycott] move was not taken lightly. Many lawyers consider legal aid cases a vocational duty. But over the last 15 years that duty has become an untenable burden,” Dylan Young recently wrote for the magazine Precedent.*
Some outsiders, including lawyers practising outside the Legal Aid Ontario system, saw the boycott by the Criminal Lawyers’ Association against Legal Aid Ontario as holding the justice system hostage. “A lawyer’s greed can never be satisfied,” said a man I recently encountered on the subway.
But there’s more to the greed, the proverbial hostage-taking, and the tariff-increase ransom demanded by the lawyers, the author suggests.
Why is an hourly rate of $77.56-$96.56 not enough for lawyers, some might ask. Sean Robichaud, a criminal defence lawyer who built his now thriving practice on cases funded by Legal Aid, has explained as follows:
“[L]et’s say I have a case of a man who started firing a gun into a public place. I have to review all the disclosure, meet with my client several times, go to court appearances, meet with the families and the Crown, review maybe 20 officers’ notes and watch 27 DVDs of CCTV footage – all before I even go to preliminary hearings. If it’s a legal aid case, I’m allotted 16 hours for preparation unless I apply for a big case management exception. The actual work would take two, three , maybe even four times as long.”
Young goes further: “For one of these lawyers to take on a complex serious crimes case and dedicate not only their own time, but also that of articling students, clerks and junior counsel, $96.95 an hour is simply not a feasible way to run business.”
Besides examining these facts of business, the author also pointed out another flaw in the existing Legal Aid system – that of the power imbalance between the Crown and defence counsels.
For example, as Patrice Band, a former assistant Crown attorney, has pointed out: “In serious cases, there would often be two Crown counsel, the police who investigated the case were available to assist and experts would be retained as needed….” “Then I’d look across the aisle and see a defence lawyer working a case alone.”
The low-tariff rate, the petty allotted hours, and the boycott are only the symptoms of the emaciated Legal Aid Ontario. “The [justice] system only works if we accept that and make all the parts of it strong enough to keep all the other parts in check,” mused Robichaud. “Otherwise, it just topples over.”
Well said, indeed.
Dylan Young, “Justice Denied” Precedent (Fall 2009) 23 online:<http://www.lawandstyle.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=730&Itemid=113>
