Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.
~ Bruce Barton
I used to ask my litigation partners how it felt to issue a Statement of Claim and ruin someone’s day. Mainly I wanted to annoy them, but I also thought that it was a useful reminder that the things that we do as lawyers can have serious consequences for other people.
I learned that lesson in my early days of practice when I found myself advising a club which catered to the affluent members of an ethnic community. The issue involved a caretaker who I will call John, who was also a member of the same community.
Unfortunately, John had become just a bit too ‘friendly’ with some of the young daughters of the members. As these things go, his actions were on the less offensive end of the scale, but nonetheless they were inappropriate. The club wanted to fire him.
Back in my office, I was not particularly sympathetic to John’s plight. I quoted chapter and verse from the case law on dismissal for cause and the provisions of the Employment Standards Act, and from my lofty heights instructed the Board of Directors how to handle the termination. Easy peasy. Just another day in the law office.
But then they told me that they wanted me to attend the Board Meeting where the decision would be made and John would be called in to be advised of his fate. And that is when I learned that what we do has real consequences for real people.
When I met John he did not look like a monster. He was just an old guy who was losing his job, being shamed in front of his community, losing his sense of belonging, and having to go home to explain it all to his wife and hope that he would remain married. He looked broken.
None of this is to say that what John did was okay, or that John did not deserve the consequences of his actions. My point is that dispensing legal advice from our offices is different from living with the consequences of our advice. Things that look black and white sitting at your desk appear in shades of grey when a grown man is sobbing in front of you.
Every time we throw legal advice into the world, it is worthwhile to think about who the ripples are going to impact, and how.
This article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.