INTRODUCTION

There is a growing perception in contemporary society that while all Canadians are afforded equal rights and equal justice in theory, this may not be true in fact. As a result of the complexity and increasingly high cost of accessing the justice system and obtaining legal services, many lower to middle income Canadians, it is said, are facing significant barriers which are precluding them from giving voice to and enforcing their legal rights. This reality, it is argued, threatens to render the fundamental principle of equality upon which our liberal democracy is founded illusory and ultimately hollow. In this paper, we focus our critical sights on the role of lawyers in relation to the important problem of access to justice which we presently confront and, specifically, on the professional obligations of an advocate to help alleviate the problem. We begin by situating the 1 William McDowell is a Partner at Lenczner Slaght LLP and former Associate Deputy Minister of Justice of Canada. Usman M. Sheikh is an Associate at Lenczner Slaght LLP and is currently on secondment with the Enforcement Branch of the Ontario Securities Commission. The views are solely those of the authors. - 3 - discussion by considering first the extent of the access to justice problem facing citizens today. We then consider the arguments advanced to anchor a lawyer and the profession’s obligation to ensure access to justice. We conclude by offering four principles which attempt to delineate the duty of an advocate to ensure access to justice and which, we believe, form part of the defining features of true legal professionalism.