Important issues are raised by the question of what might or might not be appropriate on a criminal lawyer’s webpage – even aside from the mystery of why some but not other court cases over the years did or did not attract mainstream media coverage. A jury trial I did in 2000 comes to mind. The newspapers reported a few times during the trial with at least one headline referring to a “Drug-Fuelled Sex Orgy”, as I recall. One can’t blame the press for wanting to sell papers, and my client was in fact acquitted of serious trafficking charges in the result - which meant the jury acted on my suggestion that the police officers were just plain lying (a pattern I have traced and observed from well before my first jury trial, in 1998, which was won on the same issue). But I have to conclude that a review of the publicised details of the case are better left to those with the patience to search the microfiche press reports. I’m sure that my client, whom I have kept in touch with over the years, appreciates that there is not a hyperlink to the full story on her counsel’s web page.

By the same token, perhaps a criminal lawyer’s website is an appropriate place to publicise cases which show how the criminal justice system works in practice. A 2008 headline comes to mind from a case where we sought an order from the trial Judge to allow the accused to sit at counsel table during the trial rather than being confined to a glass box in front of the jury. The motion failed but the issue certainly was important and interesting, the argument being based partly on the findings of the inquiry into the wrongful conviction of Guy Paul Morin. In the result of the trial, my client was acquitted of attempted murder. But the conviction on a lesser charge, and certain specific details of the case incline me to not publicise the matter any further.

In the big picture, the real accomplishment is to keep my clients out of the news and I believe that clients are grateful when counsel does not indulge and replay the media’s interest in their cases. The matters which do happen to attract the attention of the news media are not necessarily representative of the system’s daily workings in any event.