Law Students Pay the Price

You may recall the scandal at the University of Toronto Law School. Thirty students inflated their Christmas exam marks on applications for summer employment with certain Toronto law firms. The exams were practice exams and did not count toward their grades and were not on their transcripts. Apparently, they were caught (how, I cannot recall).

Eight of them have now been suspended for a year and notations will appear on their transcripts. The remaining 22 are waiting to find out what will happen to them. The students have a lawyer who is trying to get a lesser penalty for them.

They dont like the notation on the transcript.  Too bad.  It has to be there, not so much to punish the cheaters, but to protect the ones that did not cheat.  If there wasnt a way of identifying the cheaters, every law student in the class of 2003 and 2004 would be suspect.  Thats not fair to the honest people.

There is more to the story. There were allegations that a professor almost encouraged them to cheat. There are allegations that the University staff told students that the firms could not verify the marks if the students cheated.  The large firms, who know that the exams are practice exams, made it known that they would not hire anyone that did not disclose their marks.  Thirty students seems like too many bad apples to be coincidental.

So what? Maybe there is a larger problem. Maybe there is more to the story. That really doesn't matter to me.

What matters to me is that these are future lawyers that made a conscious decision to misrepresent the facts to their benefit, in circumstances where they were sure that no-one would be able to verify the lie.

I don't want to work with these people. I really don't want to have them acting as my opponent. Lawyers rely quite heavily on the integrity of opposing counsel. We give and receive oral promises and expect them to be honoured. There are a very few bad lawyers that other lawyers know not to trust. We don't need 30 more.

The suspensions may not be the worst of it. These students are currently university students. The Law Society of Upper Canada, which governs lawyers in Ontario, does not have any jurisdiction over these students, at least not now.   However, admission to the Law Society requires that a person be of good character. I would hope that the Law Society take a close look at these thirty people when they apply to be members of the Law Society.  Allowing known cheaters to become lawyers cannot be good for the profession.  Its not good for the public.  It hurts the reputation of every other lawyer.

There is a saying for those that break the rules: Dont do the crime if you cant do the time.