The first big adjustment for the newest partner at Gowling Henderson Lafleur LLP will be plugging into the digital communication universe. For you see, Mr. McMurtry, 75, has never once dashed off an e-mail. As far as he's concerned, webs are where spiders lurk, surfing is for beach boys and BlackBerry is what you put on toast.
"They have shown me my new e-mail address at Gowling," Mr. McMurtry said, playfully arching one of his silver eyebrows. After 16 years of writing decisions and correspondence in longhand at Osgoode Hall, he said he wants to see "how things evolve" before committing to the Internet.
"My colleagues on the bench will tell you I'm a bit of a techno-peasant," he gleefully confided during an interview on his last day of work at Osgoode Hall last week.
At Gowlings, one of his priorities is to help break through the "tyranny" of billable hours that has gripped Canada's biggest law firms. While he is sympathetic that lawyers are under intense pressure from law firms to generate a rich pipeline of hourly fees, he says, they also have a historic duty to serve their communities.
Sadly, he says Canadian law firms lag their counterparts in the U.S. and Britain when it comes to providing pro bono work for the needy.
"I think we have a struggle for the soul of the legal profession when it comes to maintaining the traditions of the profession as a helping profession," he says.
Born into privilege as the son of prominent Toronto litigator Roland McMurtry, Roy McMurtry has devoted 32 years to public service. He was Ontario's Attorney-General for a decade, a High Commissioner to Great Britain, a Canadian Football League commissioner and most recently Ontario's Chief Justice.
As a judge and Chief Justice he has been alarmed that a growing proportion of Canadians are denied justice because of the rapid escalation in legal fees and shrinking financial support for legal aid.
In the United States, pro bono legal work is big business. Since the Pro Bono Institute was created in 1993, 148 U.S. law firms have committed to contribute a minimum of 3 per cent of their firm's billable hours every year to the underprivileged.
That added up last year to 3.3 million hours of free legal advice for everyone from death row inmates to small claims court cases.
Pro bono work is so ingrained in the culture of U.S. law firms that many have designated partners to co-ordinate the free work. The institute's member firms compensate lawyers for their pro bono work and some set pro bono quotas for each associate and partner.
It is a different story in Canada. The arrival of the provincial legal aid programs in the 1960s has lulled law firms into a false sense of security that Canada's marginalized are fairly represented, Mr. McMurtry says.
The reality, he said, is that legal aid is straining to meet the demands of underprivileged citizens and Canadian lawyers aren't pitching in enough.
"I think there are a lot of fine lawyers out there who are public spirited, but there are not as many as I would like. ... Some are preoccupied with upgrading their cars and homes," he said.
While most Canadian law firms have supported pro bono work for decades, few of the firms had policies or guidelines in place until 2002 when Mr. McMurtry helped found Pro Bono Law Ontario.
Today, 14 of Canada's largest 25 law firms have adopted policies to compensate their lawyers for pro bono work, but the commitment is "underdeveloped," Mr. McMurtry maintained.
Gowlings was the "only law firm I was interested in" because of its early support of community service and Pro Bono Law. It is one of only four firms that dispatches associates one day a week to offer free advice to the needy in Ontario's small claims court. In addition, Gowlings' intellectual property lawyers offer free copyright and trademark counsel to aboriginal artists.
"This kind of work is a great opportunity to broaden the horizons of our lawyers and it's the kind of perspective that we need to see more of on Bay Street," said Scott Jolliffe, Gowlings' national managing partner.
Mr. McMurtry believes he can motivate lawyers to invest more time in pro bono work with the lure of courtroom experience. With rising litigation costs pushing more than 90 per cent of civil litigation cases to mediation and arbitration, he says real trial experience is rare for the current generation of young lawyers.
"I am in a position to help young lawyers find opportunities to get trial experience through pro bono work. ... In my first 10 years of practice I was in court more than most lawyers today have been in their entire career," he said.
