Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-21-2020

Keywords

Legal ethics, professional responsibility, Judicial law clerks

Abstract

Judicial law clerks are largely overlooked in the Canadian legal literature. This article provides a new doctrinal account of the ethical obligations of law clerks that is rooted in the fact that at least some of the major work of law clerks constitutes the practice of law—and thus that law clerks’ ethics are lawyers’ ethics. It argues that the lawyer’s duty to encourage respect for the administration of justice transposes some of the ethical obligations of the judge into professional obligations of the law clerk. The article also argues that the law societies’ regulatory and disciplinary jurisdiction over law clerks is at least largely incompatible with judicial independence.

Publication Abbreviation

UNB LJ

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