The words “family violence”, “domestic violence”, “intimate partner violence” and “coercive control” do not appear anywhere in the Federation of Law Societies of Canada Model Code of Professional Conduct. The Code does not typically have special rules for special areas of practice, but family violence is not strictly a family law matter. Family violence can be an issue in immigration and refugee law, employment law, corporate law, criminal law, landlord-tenant law, and real estate law, to name a few. When family violence is overlooked, the absence of recognition can perpetuate harm through the justice system. Family violence is a people issue and anywhere there are people they may be experiencing family violence. Legal ethics crosses all areas of legal practice, dealing with people, so it follows that legal ethics issues also intersect with family violence. In this post, I suggest that we ought to think about family violence as a legal ethics issue, and as such, we ought to think about the lawyer’s role and her professional obligations through the lens of family violence.
Deanne Sowter (Tue,) studied this question.