The View From Up North: Prominent Canadian Lawyer Surrenders License To Practice

If you think something like this can’t happen to you, maybe you’re right -- but maybe you’re wrong....

It’s easy to condemn lawyers who get disbarred as stupid or unethical and leave it at that. We all know the rules (or should). If you intentionally break them, you get punished. Black and white.

In his terrific book, Outliers (affiliate link), Malcolm Gladwell discusses the circumstances around plane crashes. Gazillions of planes take off and land safely every day. It’s an outlier when one crashes. Gladwell’s analysis is very interesting. He makes the case that planes almost never crash for “catastrophic” reasons alone. In other words, it’s rarely one huge thing that leads to a disaster. It’s almost always a buildup of several smaller errors. Pilot fatigue, coupled with an inexperienced first officer, coupled with language barriers, coupled with a mechanical breakdown. Boom.

As much as we, as a society, like to mock lawyers, most are hardworking and ethical. When a lawyer goes rogue, he or she is an outlier.

Meet lawyer Carman McClelland. He recently surrendered his license to practice in Ontario. The Law Society of Upper Canada went after him for a long list of complaints, including that he borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from his clients, filed misleading reports with LSUC, mishandled a client’s money, acted in conflict of interest, failed to represent his clients’ best interest, and failed to keep proper records of his matters.

Those are pretty serious allegations.

McClelland is a former Member of Provincial Parliament. He’s also a member of his church’s choir and a community volunteer. He was described by Jamie Holtom, a Brampton, Ontario, pastor who has known him for many years, as a man of deep faith and a friend to many.

Lawyer, MPP, man of faith, choir member, community volunteer. That does not seem like the profile of a person who would act so egregiously that it would cost him his right to practice. So, what the heck happened? Did a bomb go off inside him? Or was it a combination of many smaller factors?

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His lawyer, William Gilmour, suggested his client was struggling with mental health issues. McClelland had previously disclosed he was suffering from depression. But, was depression the cause or result of underlying issues that contributed to his professional misconduct?

The answer is, we’ll probably never know. The practice of law is stressful. Life is stressful. Sh*t happens. We have to deal with it.

How about this scenario?

Divorce + depression and guilt over divorce + don’t get to see your kids enough + financial struggles resulting from supporting two households + a downturn in the economy = a bad mixture of personal and financial stress.

In a candid moment, you disclose your troubles to a longtime (and wealthy) client who generously suggests he could lend you some money to help out (a total no-no). You feel like you’re drowning; you hate your life. Your client has more money than Trump. What the hell? Your life can’t get much worse. You take the money. It’s just temporary, right? You’ll pay it back.

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Should you be punished? Yes. Is it black and white? Should we simply condemn our hypothetical friend as stupid and unethical? I don’t think so.

If I had a point to all this it would be: life can sneak up on all of us. A confluence of small things can lead to a big crash. If you think it can’t happen to you, maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong.

It’s not just professional misconduct. How about quitting your job after years of frustration? How about divorce? The Big D is almost always the culmination of many years of small offenses: growing apart, poor communication, different interests, etc. Then one spouse cheats on the other, and bang, the relationship blows up. Everybody points to the cheating…

McClelland’s story is sad, but important. It should remind all of us to keep an eye on the small stresses in life. They build up. When they stack on top of each other, it can cause us to do horrible, uncharacteristically stupid things. Actions we may regret for the rest of our lives.

McClelland is a reminder to make changes before you get sucked into the quicksand. Don’t let things get to the point where the next small happening is the incident that puts you over the edge.

That’s the View From Up North. Have a great week.

P.S. Shout out to Malcolm. Guelph says hi to Elmira.


Steve Dykstra is a Canadian-trained lawyer and legal recruiter. He is the President of Keybridge Legal Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm that places lawyers in law firms and in-house roles throughout North America. You can contact Steve at steve@keybridgerecruiting.com. You can also read his blog at stevendykstra.wordpress.com, follow him on Twitter (@IMRecruitR), or connect on LinkedIn (ca.linkedin.com/in/stevedykstra/).