The Canadian Bar Association has "condemned in the strongest possible way" the latest Maclean's cover story, claiming the article "paints a distorted, one-sided and sensationalized picture of the legal profession."

Entitled "Lawyers are rats," the article is an interview with Philip Slayton, an ex-Bay Street lawyer and former law professor, who recently authored the book, Lawyers Gone Bad: Money, Sex and Madness in Canada's Legal Profession.

In the interview(excerpted here), Slayton says his aim was to "extract general ideas [surrounding the legal profession]: the amoral nature of legal practice, the gross deficiencies of the regulation of lawyers, the sense of misery that pervades the legal profession."

He attacks the legal profession on several fronts. "It has become a business: interested in profit, not interested in making judgements, not interested in providing access to poor people or even middle-income people," a practice that can be "fundamentally undemocratic," he says.

Padding bills is “common practice” among lawyers, he says, while also criticizing the disciplinary process of Canadian law societies as "deeply flawed.”

In response to the article, the Canadian Bar Association has posted a statement calling the article “a broadside against the legal profession that doesn’t tell the whole story.”

“By cherry-picking the worst cases of lawyer misconduct, the article has tarnished the reputation of thousands of professionals who are honest, hard-working, and community-minded people,” CBA president J. Parker MacCarthy says in the statement.

Lawyers who break the law “are subject to the law and all its penalties," he adds.

On her blog, Toronto lawyer Melissa Kluger notes that Slayton "goes out of his way to make it clear on the first page of Chapter 1 that only a few lawyers are dishonest and that the majority of lawyers 'behave honestly, serving their clients, profession, and community well.'" 

"Looks like Maclean’s might have skimmed over that disclaimer," she adds.

In the Macleans interview, while Slayton says lawyers probably can't "be comforted by the idea that in some small way [they've] improved the general state of society," he adds that "the legal practice is very diverse, and there are lots of different kinds of people practicing law, and this is not true of all of them."

Update 1:47pm...Comments are piling up on Kluger's blog in response.

Accusing Maclean's of "taking a cheap shot to sell more magazines," Michele Allinotte writes: "I am proud to say that I am a lawyer. I went into law because it is a helping profession and I know none of my clients would agree that 'lawyers are rats.'"

"It’s an outrageous attack on the profession, and it demands an answer. Every lawyer I’ve spoken to about this is outraged, and rightly so," adds a poster claiming to be Jordan Furlong, editor-in-chief of the CBA's own magazine.

Adds "an actual lawyer": "I agree that many Bay Street(or Howe Street)lawyers are rats or worse, but that is just a side-effect of life in a big law firm. The vast majority of lawyers are decent folk who are not interested in the greed and bootlicking that is the lot of lawyers at big firms. Big law has some serious problems, and everyone in the profession knows it. Please don’t tar us all with the same brush."

Then this from a "former legal assistant": "As someone who was a legal assistant for 13 years, I assure you I have seen it all. And, if it wasn’t the lawyers or the other staff, it was the clients. From the lawyers: displays of obsessive-compulsiveness... to breaches of confidentiality.. to sexual harassment... to verbal abuse... to having counsel for the other side purport to give me instructions on a file... I foolishly endured it all. Then there were the clients - the inappropriate personal comments('Are you gaining weight?')and verbal abuse generally consisting of yelling and screaming at me over the phone or in person, usually after they received their bill. I cannot believe I lasted 13 years but after having to take two stress leaves, it was time to pack it in."

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