Ethical Lawyering Across Canada's Legal Traditions

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which a "reconceptualization" from the deontological and consequentialist paradigms that characterize traditional legal ethics discourse, even as it attempts to break from the tradition, still remains rooted in Western ideals of "self;" "law" and "society" -- that is, a notion of lawyers as understood in the common and civil law traditions. It engages the emerging notion of a multi-juridical Canadian legal tradition -- that is, in addition to the common law and civil law traditions of the English and French, Canada’s legal inheritance includes (and thus must be harmonized with) indigenous law -- and questions how our notions of lawyering and legal practice may have to change to accommodate this non-Western (but nevertheless Canadian) perspective.