LAWS16206 Ethics and Professional Practice

INSTRUCTIONS

In this assignment, you will find three fact scenarios/cases dealing with ethical issues.  All three fact scenarios take place in Ontario.  You will identify a relevant tribunal decision and you will answer questions about a discipline matter from a jurisdiction other than Ontario.  That decision will concern a lawyer rather than a paralegal.  For evaluation criteria, see the attached marking rubric.  You will be marked on spelling, grammar, and sentence structure, so be sure to use spell-check and grammar check software functions.  For each scenario/case, you must identify relevant Paralegal Rules of Conduct and Paralegal Professional Conduct Guidelines that apply to the scenario.  Be specific when citing the relevant rules and guidelines (provide pinpoint citations – general references to Rules and Guidelines are insufficient).

1.  Sephora Longo is a licensed paralegal and sole practitioner.  Sephora is representing Divexx Corporation, the landlord in a landlord/tenant matter.  The tenant is represented by Marcus Karoll who is also a licensed paralegal and sole practitioner.  Sephora has been calling and emailing Marcus for ten days to attempt to discuss the matter, but she has not received any response to her calls or emails.  The last time she called his office number she could not even leave a message for him because his voicemail was full.  Sephora is catching up on some work in the office the evening of February 5^th when Marcus finally calls her back.   Marcus says that he didn’t expect someone as pretty as she is to be working on a Friday night.  Sephora quickly responds that she didn’t expect him to be working at all because she can never get hold of him. Since they have never met, Sephora assumes that Marcus has seen her photo on her firm’s website, but she doesn’t give him the satisfaction of asking about it.

Marcus tells Sephora that he has been very busy juggling a part-time position teaching in a paralegal program which has a ridiculous turnaround time for him to grade seventy-five six-page case briefs. He asks Sephora to agree to a postponement of the virtual hearing scheduled for February 22^nd.   He says he doesn’t have time to properly prepare for the hearing because he is too busy trying to get his grading done.  He tells her that he is hoping to get a full-time teaching position because he hates dealing with clients who take forever to pay his bills.  He mentions a couple of those clients by name, but Sephora doesn’t know them.  He says that he has too many deadbeat clients and asks her if she has trouble getting her clients to pay.  When Sephora tells him that she is careful to get a decent retainer at the outset, he comments that it’s probably easier for her to sweet talk them into it than it is for him.  Sephora does not respond to that comment.

Sephora tells Marcus that the hearing has already been postponed because of COVID and that she doubts that her client will be willing to agree to an additional postponement.  She tells Marcus that she will get back to him on Monday or Tuesday when she has had the opportunity to seek her client’s instructions. After she hangs up, Sephora types up a memo to file concerning the conversation and diarizes Wednesday afternoon at 2 p.m. to email her client for instructions about the postponement request. The note on her calendar says, “Call Divexx VP and get back to creep.”

a) Identify two of the Paralegal Rules of Conduct that have been breached and two Paralegal Professional Conduct Guidelines that apply to the scenario and explain how/why and to whom those rules and guidelines are applicable.  Be specific when citing the relevant rules and guidelines (provide pinpoint citations – general references to Rules and Guidelines are insufficient).

b) Locate a Law Society Tribunal decision from any Canadian jurisdiction that was determined between 2018 and 2021.  The decision must be one that we have not studied in class.  It need not be a disciplinary decision, but the case must deal with one of the ethical issues you have identified.  The case may concern either a lawyer or a paralegal.  In no more than two paragraphs, explain the relationship between that case and the ethical issue you have identified.  Be sure to provide the citation for the case.

2. Leon Bridges has practised as a paralegal for five years.  Leon worked for a firm for three and a half years and decided to open his own practice.  Unfortunately, less than a year after Leon opened the firm, a global pandemic occurred, and Leon found that his business really slowed down.   Leon was struggling to pay the rent on his office space, so he decided to give up the lease and work from home.  That resulted in a significant savings, but Leon still wasn’t getting the business that he needed, so he decided to accept some cases on a contingency fee basis.  

Luckily Leon was successful in securing a settlement of $15,000 for his first Small Claims Court client.  Leon knew that he could have done better by at least $5,000, but he figured it would take another week or two of going back and forth with the defendant.  Meanwhile Leon had to pay his accountant’s invoice in three days, or he would be stuck keeping his firm’s financial records himself.  Leon failed Accounting for Paralegals twice in college and he did not need that headache.  As soon as the settlement funds arrived, Leon invoiced the client, deducted his contingency fee from the settlement funds, transferred that money from his trust to the firm’s general account, and paid his accountant’s invoice.  Leon was busy trying to drum up business for his practice, so it was a few weeks before he sent the remainder of the settlement funds to his client along with a reporting letter.  

Not much business came through the next month, so Leon approached one of his regular clients, Amanda Jones.  Leon was able to borrow $5000 from her to tide the business over.  He told her that he would work her next three cases for free in return for the interest-free loan. Amanda was happy with that deal.

a) Identify two of the Paralegal Rules of Conduct that have been breached by Leon Bridges and two Paralegal Professional Conduct Guidelines that apply to the scenario. Explain how those rules and guidelines apply. Be specific when citing the relevant rules and guidelines (provide pinpoint citations – general references to Rules and Guidelines are insufficient).

3. Brian Gumbel, a paralegal, was walking his dog Odie when he bumped into his neighbour Jonathan Garfield who was also out for a walk.  Jonathan told Brian that his cousin had just died of COVID-19 and his cousin was two years younger than Jonathan.  He said that it really made him think that he should finally make a will.  Jonathan asked how much Brian would charge to prepare a will for him.

Explain what Brian should do in this situation.  Refer to the relevant provisions of at least one by-law, refer to at least one relevant rule in the Paralegal Rules of Conduct and at least one relevant guideline in the Paralegal Professional Conduct Guidelines. Be specific when citing the provisions of the by-law, relevant rules, and guidelines.

4.  Many of the Paralegal Rules of Conduct mirror rules of conduct that govern lawyers.     Choose one of the following cases:  

The Law Society of Manitoba v Jhanji, 2020 MLBS 1 (CanLII), Chiasson (Re), 2020 LSBC 32 (CanLII), or Law Society of Saskatchewan v de Whytell, 2020 SKLSS 7 (CanLII).  Identify the rules and guidelines that would apply had a paralegal licensed in Ontario committed the same actions as the lawyer in the case that you have selected.