Why being referred to as a racialized lawyer by the LSO is worse than any racist slur
I had a potential client cold call me recently (this rarely happens in my practice). In our initial 15-minute consultation he said the reason he called me was because he saw my photo on my website. He made the point of remarking that “Us brown guys should stick together.”
I was taken aback by the comment. I consider myself a lawyer that happens to be brown, rather than a brown lawyer. This isn’t a problem that I would consider calling the Practice Management Hotline over (I used to call them all the time during my first year of practice) However one initial intake questions is “how did you find out about me?” So I thought this comment required more reflection.
Solo practitioners are much closer to the Law Societies’ Rules of Professional Conduct that other lawyers. There’s no directing the call to a law firm partner, there’s no-one that’s going to tell you what to do or say. Speaking with the potential client I felt the ethical tension between Rule 7.2-1 “A lawyer shall be courteous, civil, and act in good faith with all persons with whom the lawyer has dealings in the course of their practice” and Rule 3.2-2 “When advising clients, a lawyer shall be honest and candid”. The rules are sometimes all you have when faced with circumstances involving dishonest clients. I did what most unsure lawyers would do in the situation, said nothing and kept my professional composure.
I think after being in practice for a while you develop a ‘spidey-sense’ for bad clients. Any client that retains you on the basis of your skin tone is likely to be a bad client. I have no problem with clients selecting on the basis of language or cultural connection. But this particular client was selecting me purely how I looked rather than my legal competence to perform his mandate.
The interaction made me reflect on the LSOs practice on creating awareness of the challenges faced by ‘Racialized Lawyers’ in the legal profession. According to the LSO Working Group, the term racialized “expresses race as the process by which groups are socially constructed, as well as to modes of self-identification related to race, and includes Arab, Black (e.g. African-Canadian, African, Caribbean), Chinese, East-Asian (e.g. Japanese, Korean), Latin American and Hispanic, South Asian (e.g. Indo-Canadian, Indian Subcontinent), South-East Asian (e.g. Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, Filipino), and West Asian (e.g. Iranian, Afghan) persons”[1]
As a lawyer that happens to be racialized, according to this definition, I find this approach to advancing equity and diversity in the legal profession pejorative to say the least. I did all the requirements to become a lawyer, why should this be qualified by my ethnicity? I have experienced my fair share of racism, but those individuals are usually easy to avoid and many of them change their thinking over time. While this sort racism is hurtful and wrong, it is at least localized to specific individuals. The problem is acute, rather than chronic
The attempt to reduce the challenges faced by racialized lawyers is more pervasive and socially corrosive that ‘garden variety’ racism. As a policy it is both misguided and shallow. Every lawyer in the law society in Ontario enjoys privilege by virtue of their professional license. This is the case regardless of your social class or ethnicity. It would be better and far more productive to develop your competency as a lawyer than complain about ‘micro-aggressions and that there are not enough ethnic partners at Bay street law firms. Promoting people or reducing barriers on the basis of group identity is a certain to create divisiveness and mistrust amongst members and the general public. This will ultimately a less competent and more mean-spirited law society.
Lawyers should by qualified by their ability to practice law. Any additional qualification that is not linked to a substantive legal skill is bound to lead us in the wrong direction.
[1] https://www.lso.ca/news-events/latest-news/latest-news-2013/challenges-faced-by-racialized-licensees-survey-available
