I’m in the middle of doing an assignment, so this will be a short post.

Did you know that a mushroom is a vegetable? So decided a court in Re Ontario Mushroom Co. Ltd. and Learie after a court ruled that mushroom plant workers are not entitled to minimum wage because they worked on cultivation of vegetables.

Did you know that a horse is a type of cattle? It is according to the Criminal Code of Canada: ““cattle” means neat cattle or an animal of the bovine species by whatever technical or familiar name it is known, and includes any horse, mule, ass, pig, sheep or goat” (R.S., 1985, c. C-46 s. 2);

That’s all I remember for now, I may post more as I come across them. If you know a crazy statute or a nonsensical interpretation, post it in the comments.

Today I had the pleasure of sitting through an introductory Legal Ethics and Professionalism lecture (I would have enjoyed the lecture much more if I hadn’t been sick, but that’s besides the point). The professor talked at great length about civility in communication, especially if the communication is in writing. It is far too easy in this connected world to send something off in the heat of the moment or without considering about what the message will look like to the receiving party. Of course the professor was talking about emails, instant messages, twitter, blogs, and other online media. But when I got home, I found a far more extreme example.

“Deidre Dare” (I put her name in quotes because I’m not sure if that’s her real name) is a former associate of Allen & Overy (a UK law firm). Part of what peaked my interest in this story is that Deidre Dare worked in the firm’s Moscow office. She put up a website with some material that her firm deemed objectionable. The material? A fictitious account of an expat living in Moscow and engaging in all kinds of questionable activity including drinking, drugs, sex, and (according to abovethelaw.com), something involving donkeys and dwarves, but I wasn’t curious enough to get to that part of her “book”. The part I did notice was a blanket knock against my city of birth:
“I drink too much. I do too many drugs. I fuck around. I waste days and time. I spend too much time
at parties. I spend too much time alone. I spend too much money. I talk too much. I smoke too much.
I don’t write. I indulge myself……”
There’s a shorter way of saying all that, I realised:
“I live in Moscow”.
To nobody’s surprise, Deidre Dare eventually got fired from her firm. She’s suing for wrongful dismissal and such, but that’s not the point. The question is should a lawyer who works for a respectable firm be allowed to publish such material? In other words, does it violate some kind of ethical code of conduct?

My personal test to this is fairly rudimentary and perhaps incomplete, but here it is: if it were known to a “reasonable” client what his/her lawyer was in doing in his/her free time, would the client still hire this lawyer? If not, the actions of this lawyer are probably unethical.

As for Deidre Dare? She’s writing a column called “sExpat” for a Moscow-based English language paper, and is considering high-class prostitution in order to increase her cash-flow. I would like to think she’s joking, but you never know.

For the curious, you can find Deidre Dare’s website here (May be NSFW).

Welcome to the brand new blog! This blog is a spin-off of the old LawSchoolBlog.ca. It has become too limiting to blog on that since the title suggests that the blog is only about law school. This is not the case for lawyerling; contributors can blog about anything related to the legal field. For more info, check out the “About” page. To learn more about the contributors, take a look at the “Contributors” page. And to become a contributor, send an email to adminca.

The old LawSchoolBlog posts are saved in the archive. If you are interested in something that I wrote with regards to law school, look under the “archive-LawSchoolBlog” category.

Enjoy!