Proactive Regulation of Lawyers: Proof and Possibilities
Channel: Schulich Law
Date: 2014-03-12

The 23rd Annual FB Wickwire Memorial Lecture in Professional Responsibility and Legal Ethics presented by Susan Saab Fortney, Howard Lichtenstein Distinguished Professor of Legal Ethics, Maurice A Deane School of Law, Hofstra University.

March 6, 2014

Co-sponsored with the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society.

Legislators in the state of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia took the pioneering step of including the concept of "ethical infrastructure" in the statute allowing legal practitioners to incorporate their law practices, with no restrictions on non-lawyer ownership. The legislation requires that incorporated firms appoint a director to ensure that the firm implement and maintain "appropriate management systems" to enable the provision of legal services in accordance with obligations imposed by law.

To guide firms in complying with the statutory requirements, the Legal Services Commissioner for NSW worked with various stakeholders to develop "ten objectives of sound legal practice." The Commissioner also devised an "education toward compliance" approach requiring the firm to complete a self-assessment process that covers the firm's compliance with the each of the ten objectives. Because this approach focuses on prevention and mitigation, the NSW program is considered to be a form of "proactive, management based regulation."

In the Wickwire lecture, Professor Susan Fortney, the Howard Lichtenstein Distinguished Professor of Legal Ethics at Maurice Deane School of Law at Hofstra University in New York, will discuss the Australian experience and research that revealed that management-based regulation dramatically reduced the number of complaints involving incorporated firms. She will also review her study findings related to the other effects of the self-assessment process. Based on data from her study, Professor Fortney will share recommendations for designing a management-based regulatory regime and possibilities for integrating management-based approaches into lawyer regulation.

More in this series: http://www.dal.ca/faculty/law/news-events/speaker-series/fb-wickwire-memorial-lecture-professional-responsibility-ethics.html