by David Chong

There have been many changes, one of the most obvious of which is in the field of office equipment. The manual typewriter was replaced by electric typewriters, word processors, and computers. High-speed photocopiers and printers replaced carbon paper and mimeographs.

Communications are infinitely more efficient even if I find ten digit telephone numbers impossible to remember. Facsimiles, e-mails, and couriers have largely replaced Canada Post.

In 1958 I was Junior Defence Counsel in an Assize Court trial. Douglas Brown, QC, a leading lawyer of the time was Senior Crown Counsel. He, his Junior Counsel, my Senior Counsel, and I were having coffee together when the subject of office equipment was raised. Mr. Brown said that his office had an amazing new machine that automatically typed one’s spoken words. This was in the days when an IBM Selectric was still a radical innovation. I couldn’t resist joining in the leg pulling and pointed out that the genealogy section of the machine was very important. I explained how it recorded the speaker’s age, gender, education, racial background, place of birth and other personal information so that the machine could make the necessary adjustments for accents.

I don’t suppose that dictation equipment has yet attained the degree of sophistication we joked about half a century ago but I have had dealings with a lawyer whose whole office seemed to be in a laptop computer. His mailing address was a Post Office Box and he communicated by e-mail and cell phone.

As great as the changes have been to the equipment used in the practice of law, they are not greater than the changes in the law itself. There are many refinements and developments to the laws that existed 50 years ago. There are new areas of law, such as Aboriginal Law, Constitutional Law, Human Rights, Environmental Law, Internet Commerce, to name only a few.

In 1955, there were approximately 700 lawyers in British Columbia, today the number approaches 11,000. Advertising was prohibited. Regulators now must monitor not only the advertising in traditional media but also on the worldwide web. I don’t think that in the 1950s anyone could have predicted the quantity and nature of today’s advertising.

Andrew Joe was called to the Bar in 1953. I believe he was the first person from any visible minority to become a lawyer in British Columbia. There were 68 persons in my graduation class (UBC Law 1954), five were women. On November 1, 2004, there were 724 students in UBC law school (all years) of which 393 were women (54.4 per cent).

I am not aware of any statistics pertaining to the ethnicity of students or lawyers but I have heard that a group known as Chinese Law Students at UBC annually sponsor a dinner which is attended by hundreds of students and lawyers.

Women and members of all minority groups now serve at nearly every level of the Bench and Bar. Indeed the President of The Law Society of British Columbia, Anna Fung, QC, is a timely example.

David Chong was born in Lytton, British Columbia in 1933. Attended UBC (Arts 1954, Law 1954). Called to B.C. Bar 1955. Currently an associate at Chen & Leung, Oakridge Centre, Vancouver, B.C.

This article was published in the February 2007 issue of BarTalk and is subject to the copyright by the British Columbia Branch of the Canadian Bar Association, 2007, all rights reserved.