Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee
The Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee is dedicated to fostering and advancing ethical and professional conduct and standards in the legal profession. It is responsible for identifying and studying issues relating to ethics and professional responsibility, recommending changes to the CBA Code of Professional Conduct, and developing practice tools to assist lawyers in identifying and fulfilling their professional responsibilities.
Protect client confidentiality in disclosing information about trust accounts
If you have a trust account at a financial institution that is a member of the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC), you will receive a reminder in April about disclosure requirements they must meet under the CDIC Joint and Trust Account Disclosure By-law. For a trust deposit to enjoy additional insurance coverage, trustees must disclose certain information on the records of the member institution. The good news is that solicitor-client privilege has been addressed, and confidentiality of client information can be protected.
To protect client confidentiality, a lawyer or notary may substitute an alpha numeric or other code for the name and address of each beneficiary. The code would refer back to the records maintained at the lawyers’ or notary’s office, thereby maintaining confidentiality.
Read the CDIC Letter
Visit the CDIC website
Or call 1-800-461-2342
CBA Code of Professional Conduct
 The CBA's Code of Professional Conduct (2009) has been updated to reflect the realities of practising law in today’s society. The new Code contains major revisions in two areas: conflicts of interest and clients’ language rights.
The CBA adopted its first Code of Professional Conduct in 1920. The CBA Code plays an integral role in the Canadian legal profession. Some Canadian jurisdictions have adopted the CBA Code, with occasional modifications, as their own. In other jurisdictions, law societies refer to the CBA Code when they interpret or amend their codes. Academics, law students and Canadian lawyers working outside Canada refer to the CBA Code when they need to know Canadian standards of conduct. In this era of globalized law practice and increased mobility between Canadian jurisdictions, it is important to have common conduct rules for all Canadian lawyers.
The 2009 edition of the Code reflects the realities of practicing law in today's society in substance as well as in form. For the first time, it is published online in this fully searchable format.
Searching the Code
By Chapter. The chapters appear along the left-hand column of the pdf. Clicking on the chapter name or number links to the relevant text.
By Keyword. The search function is activated as follows:“Find” in the toolbar will locate the first instance of the keyword or phrase. “Next” and “previous” buttons provide further navigation.
The binocular icon on the far left, and Control+F open a box. Type in the word or phrase, which will then appear highlighted in the text. Multiple occurrences of the keyword will be listed and are linked to the relevant text.
Practice Tools
In a series of cases over the past three decades, the Supreme Court of Canada has greatly strengthened solicitor-client privilege, elevating it from a limited evidentiary privilege into a quasi-constitutional right to communicate in confidence with one’s lawyer which can be invoked in any circumstances. However, the Court’s jurisprudence does not provide an adequate framework for addressing several issues regarding the privilege. Moreover, the Canadian approach is in many ways at odds with how the privilege is treated in other common law jurisdictions.
In this context, CBA engaged Professor Adam Dodek to prepare a discussion paper to take stock of the state of solicitor-client privilege in Canada and internationally, and to identify current challenges and opportunities for CBA.
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