In a rare, forceful speech at the opening of the Canadian Bar Association annual meeting in Halifax on Sunday, Johnston issued a stinging assessment of the legal profession and pleaded with it to change. We need a new model for professionalism in law, he said. To borrow a saying from a sister profession: physician, heal thyself.
A former dean of law at the University of Western Ontario, Johnston said lawyers such as himself enjoy a social contract with society: In return for self-regulation and a monopoly over the practice of law, he said, We are duty bound to improve justice and serve the public good. Instead, he said the profession is failing to uphold its end of the deal. READ MORE
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"Canada’s lawyers and judges are losing sight of their
commitments to justice and the public good, and the profession must reform
itself and rebuild the trust of ordinary citizens", says Gov. Gen. David
Johnston.
