legal ethics handbook - Nova Scotia Barristers' Society

Foreword
LEGAL ETHICS HANDBOOK
This publication marks the first time that the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society has made a comprehensive
statement on legal ethics and professional conduct. Until now such comments as have been made were in the
form of rulings by the Society's Discipline Committees or isolated one-issue pronouncements by the Society's
Legal Ethics Committees. The burden of formulation, revision and promulgation of legal ethics en bloc has been
carried by the Canadian Bar Association.
The CBA has given the profession inestimable service with the small blue book we all know affectionately as the
"Code''. Its pages are well worn by members of the Society's Discipline Committees whose work, it seems, is
never done. It is, or should be, at the right or left hand of all our active members. It is a touchstone. It might be
argued that the Code is the CBA's most significant contribution to the legal profession in Canada.
It is now time for the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society, the governing body of the legal profession in this province, to
shoulder part of the burden. It does so by the publication of this Handbook. As will be seen, much of the form and
even more of the content of the CBA's Code of Professional Conduct is incorporated. But there are some changes
which we consider better reflect practice and the thinking of lawyers in Nova Scotia. It is too much to expect of a
national professional organization to craft a code of ethics for adoption throughout this broad and diverse land. In
the Society's collective view, it is wiser, now, to use the CBA work as a model and to mold it for use in Nova
Scotia.
There is another aspect. The legal profession, as indeed other professions, is under public scrutiny as never
before. This is perhaps as it should be. We have, after all, a public trust of considerable magnitude. In furtherance
of our obligations under this trust we should have a more direct hand in the formulation of ethics and behavioural
standards which are to prevail here. Anything less is an abdication of our responsibility.
This is not to suggest that the CBA should feel that its work in legal ethics and professional responsibility is
concluded. It and it alone is the surveyor of the national scene and remains best able to continue its work as the
maker of the model, leaving it to the provinces and territories to make the final adjustments.
There can be no foolproof guardian of moral fitness at the gates of our law schools or upon admission as
practising barristers. What we can do is raise the level of ethical consciousness in our legal institutions and
amongst our members. Dalhousie Law School is doing its part with the introduction in the fall of 1988 of a
mandatory third year course in professional responsibility. We shall endeavour to do ours. The publication of this
Handbook is but an example. We hope it, like the Code, will be a touchstone.
It is not intended that this be a compendium which is determinative of all ethical and behavioural questions that
arise daily in the practice of law. It is but a collection of ethical and professional precepts considered to be
appropriate for use in Nova Scotia at the time of publication from which careful extrapolation may be made to
assist in the resolving of questions which are not expressly covered. The Handbook will be supplemented, from
time to time, by rulings of the Society's Legal Ethics Committee and regulations of the Society itself.
In the preparation of this Handbook, a recent Canadian text on professional legal conduct by Professor Beverley
G. Smith was used. Entitled "Professional Conduct for Canadian Lawyers" and published by Butterworths Canada
Ltd., the text is recommended as excellent supplementary reading.
Practice in Nova Scotia, on the eve of publication of this Handbook, is facing rapid change, technological and
otherwise, characterized by growing law firms with expensive overheads. There is stiff competition for work. There
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