Every lawyer has heard one too many lawyer jokes, and knows all too well the relatively low esteem in which lawyers are held by many. But contrary to popular belief, this is not necessarily a brand new trend. Scholarly works have shown that lawyers and the legal profession have been open to criticism and attacks long before this generation of practitioners. This makes the problem of improving the public's perception of lawyers more challenging, since stereotypes and misconceptions about the law have a long history. The LCI has already rolled out one public perception campaign, a series of poster advertisements that ran in many newspapers, news gazettes and bus shelters across Canada.
More campaigns are currently under development.
Such campaigns will come under consideration by both the CBA's National Communications Committee and the CBA's Governing Council. At the heart of the problem of lawyers' poor public perception is the public's lack of full understanding of what lawyers do. The lawyer's job is a tremendously difficult one, with unique ethical and intellectual challenges that express the careful balancing at the heart of our constitutional democracy. This point must be made clear to Canadians in order for anything to really change. Direct public education about the law can take place on many levels.