Is there life after life?
Andrew Coyne
National Post - July.99

Maurice Sychuk is a former professor of law at the University of Alberta, a practising lawyer for some 27 years. At one time he was regarded as Canada's leading expert on oil and gas law. He is also, by his own admission, a recovering alcoholic, a reformed bully and a convicted murderer. For the latter indiscretion he stabbed his wife 22 times, and left the knife in her neck when he'd done he was sentenced to life imprisonment, serving 10 years before his parole last year. He was also disbarred.
Now the former "Screamin' Mo" (a reference to his verbal style with students who displeased him) is back, a changed man, seeking reinstatement as a lawyer, the final stage, he argues, in his rehabilitation. No one disputes his legal competence. Nor is there much doubt of his remorse. He was by all accounts a model prisoner, and it is not seriously suggested that he is likely to reoffend. Yet his readmission to the bar is opposed by most of his former colleagues, on the grounds that get this, it might hurt their reputation.
"It cannot be that a member who commits murder can possibly satisfy the ethical conditions of membership," argue a group of 11 U of A law professors in a submission filed with the Law Society of Alberta, which has just concluded hearings on Mr. Sychuk's application. "The public whom we serve and whose trust we finally depend upon would loudly and wildly condemn" his reinstatement. One professor put it even more bluntly. "If Mo Sychuk is readmitted, then we are not a profession any longer." The lawyers' sensitivity to their reputation is understandable, if a little late.
In libel suits, a plaintiff is not entitled to damages if his name is already so blackened that an extra bit of defamation would make no difference. Coming just days after a group of lawyers laid claim to $52-million out of money allotted to compensate victims of hepatitis C, it may fairly be doubted whether there is anything in Mr. Sychuk's application that would leave the public with a more jaded impression of the profession than it already has. Still, this concern for appearances is revealing in its own way.
The case is being depicted as a great moral dilemma, a struggle between, on the one hand, Mr. Sychuk's desire for redemption, and on the other, the necessity of maintaining public trust in the legal system. With respect, it has little to do with either. It is, rather, yet another installment in the profession's unceasing campaign to present itself as something other than a mere trade, to drape in robes of lex regia what is in reality a business like any other. Of course, it isn't a business like any other, in one sense. Lawyers are, in the phrase, officers of the court, and as such carry certain public responsibilities not given to ordinary tradesmen. Moreover, their customers generally have no option but to engage them; the business they transact is especially hard to follow; and the consequences, if the service they provide is poor, can be extreme including loss of liberty.
For these reasons and more, the legal trade may well require a greater degree of regulation than most. There may even be a case for the traditional self-regulation, on the grounds that only lawyers are equipped to deal with other lawyers. But the justification, if any, for this arrangement is the need to protect the public -- not the profession. In Mr. Sychuk's case, there is no threat to the public, nor has one been alleged. He's not about to murder his clients. And even if his past acts, shall we say, showed a certain disregard for the law, there's no sign this is habitual. Rather, the case against him seems to be, well, he killed someone. Whatever his penance, whatever his punishment, it cannot wash away his guilt. To readmit him would bring dishonour on the profession. Maybe it would.
But why should that decide the matter? However fascinating the moral issues may be in this case what are the limits of punishment; what are the possibilities of rehabilitation; what are the obligations of forgiveness they are more or less beside the point.
The question is: Why is it up to other lawyers to decide whether Mr. Sychuk can practise law? Why, when protection of the public is not at issue? True, Mr. Sychuk does not absolutely have to be a lawyer: He can earn a living in other ways. But why should he not be? He is obliged, for his crimes, to pay his debt to society but to the Law Society? There are plenty of ways to register disapproval, without taking away his right to practise.
If Mr. Sychuk's dark past is such that no law firm in Alberta would wish to be associated with him, they are under no obligation to hire him. If potential clients are so revolted by his conduct, they, too, have every right to shun him. It would even be open to the Law Society to close its doors to him, and to advertise this fact if this did not also entail, under provincial law, the automatic loss of his licence. That, to me, is the real issue, here.
It's fine for other lawyers not to want to work with him. But why should he be prevented from working at all? And why should it be within the power of the Law Society to prevent him?

National Post - Andrew Coyne