In the British tradition from which our justice system originates, a lawyer is either a Barrister or a Solicitor. A Barrister is ‘a lawyer who speaks in the higher courts of law’. A Solicitor gives legal advice and prepares legal documents. In Ontario these roles and titles are not strictly separated. I am a Barrister and Solicitor.

I argued my first case in the Ontario Court of Justice in 1994. At that point the only title I had yet earned was ‘law student’ or ‘student caseworker’. My client feared being incarcerated and was, obviously, thrilled to avoid that. I think I was just as excited as he was about the result. There probably was not a very high probability of him going to jail, but we fought the case as if there was. How else? Formally called to the Bar in 1998, I have practiced as a Toronto criminal defence lawyer ever since.

Having focused on criminal law from the outset, I was fortunate as a student and a new lawyer to work with some of the most impressive criminal counsel in the country, in my humble opinion, not only on the defence side but also as an articling clerk for the Crown. From that crucible I emerged devoted to a style of practice which is necessarily offensive to the government bureaucracy that we call the criminal justice system. It is not my desire to make things difficult for police and the crown attorney; it is my duty and purpose to do so.

Though I sometimes think I have now ‘seen it all’, I am still amazed and appalled from time to time at new and further examples of how accused persons’ most basic rights are trampled and forgotten. I enjoy an unfortunate form of job-security arising from a wide range of sources including but not limited to the old-fashioned bureaucratic inertia of the justice system, the so-called ‘law and order’ political agenda, a burgeoning ‘domestic violence’ industry and the hopeless ongoing catastrophe sometimes referred to as ‘the war on drugs’. As unfortunate as all that is, I do love my job.