Paid ‘thousands of dollars’ for papers By Robert Todd | Publication Date: Monday, 28 January 2008
A Toronto lawyer was recently fined $10,000 by the Law Society of Upper Canada for selling course work to a York University MBA student for “thousands of dollars.”
Shane Smith was reprimanded by a law society hearing panel last month for conduct unbecoming a student licensee. He was given one year to pay the fine and an additional $1,000 in costs.
According to an agreed statement of facts, Smith acted contrary to parts of the Law Society Act when, while he was an articling student, he “provided and sold papers, which he and another student member had researched and written, to M, who was then a student in the MBA program at York University’s graduate school of business, with the knowledge that the papers would be submitted to the graduate school of business as M’s work.”
The student who received the course work is not named in the statement of facts.
Smith, 31, who currently works for IBM Canada Ltd., was called to the bar in July 2004.
But while the LSUC decision pertains to Smith’s activities while he was articling and M was an MBA student, documents obtained by Law Times show the scandal reached back to their law school days...
Read the whole article here. It never ceases to amaze me what people will risk...their entire career sometimes.
I find this report deeply troubling. IMHO, he should have been severely reprimanded. This decision is simply a slap on the wrist. If it was going on for years, he knew but didn't care.
ReplyDeleteWith self-regulation already in doubt, this is another argument for the ineffectiveness of the current discipline process.