Millions Stolen by Ontario Lawyers

On November 19, 2005 the Toronto Star had an article titled 'Law society plan still too soft, critics say' (I'd link it but if readers don't have a subscription, they won't be able to access it - so I'll summarize)

The Star reported (finally) that lawyers are "stealing thousands if not millions of dollars and rarely go to jail" based on their 5 year study of discipline cases. One of them, William Sinclair, a lawyer in Parry Sound Ontario, bilked 14 of his clients out of $3 million dollars and never went to jail.

The article went on to say that the province wants to ammend the Ontario Law Society Act to make it easier to release information on bad lawyers.

They quoted Malcolm Heins, Director of the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) asking the province to give them "greater scope to share information to protect the public interest". (I'm wondering when that became a concern to them? See CanLaw in links at left)

Apparently, section 49.12 of the Law Society Act? Their rules of discipline? (not sure because the Star's report doesn't clarify this) does not give LSUC the authority to disclose anything they find in a lawyer's files during a discipline hearing.

The article was rebutted by George Hunter, the treasurer of LSUC here.

Notice on page 2 paragraph 2 that Mr. Hunter reminds the Minister of the Attorney General that it is the responsiblity of the police, the Crown and the courts to deal with criminal matters and that those discipline prosecutions were available to the police.

The last sentence in the last paragraph on the last page says it clearly: "nothing the Law Society does as a regulator prevents the police from obtaining information from a lawyer".

This means once police have information that a lawyer stole money from a client supported by evidence given to them by the client (that is if they look at it - see this post) they can apply for a warrant to search a lawyer's files.

I wonder what happened to those individuals in Parry Sound who have tried to tell the Ontario Provincial Police about it? They were probably told to go to the Law Society like I was...

Mr. Hunter sums it up pretty good in paragraph 3 on the first page: "We do not know why the police have not pursued criminal investigations in cases where such prosecutions have occurred, and in fact the police were aware of these discipline prosecutions."

So, who's complicit in the theft of these millions?