“The Black Sheep”: The Disciplining of Territorial and Alberta Lawyers, 1885–1928.

Abstract

AbstractThe Law Society of Alberta was given an almost exclusive jurisdiction to discipline Alberta lawyers in the 1920s. “The Black Sheep” uses the records of governments, courts and law societies in the old North-West Territories and Alberta to trace the emergence of this aspect of professional self-governance from 1885 to 1928. For most of this period, governments and then courts had disciplined lawyers. However, there was an increasing number of public complaints and criticisms directed against lawyers in the mid-1910s and especially after the Great War. By the 1920s the Alberta Government, the senior judiciary and the Law Society of Alberta decided, each for different reasons, that the best way to handle the complaints was to let the profession discipline itself. Ironically, the number of complaints increased even as the Society exacted greater discipline on lawyers.