It is not just lawyers in the UK that are concerned about their professional standing (see my recent post Whither the legal profession? The same is true in Canada.
A recent post by Jordan Furlong a little over a week ago in his blog Law 21 took me to Law Times ,
“Toronto immigration and criminal law lawyer Mary Boyce submitted the motion at the [Upper Canada] law society AGM. It states that “it is demeaning to lawyers to be treated as a class of licensee.”. . . Boyce told the meeting that she first noticed the use of the term “licensee” in her member’s annual report. “For some, it seemed to be a lowering of the bar, a demeaning of the bar,” she said. “Words matter; they are our stock and trade.”
Many lawyers at the meeting voiced their concern with the change in language. Karen Andrews said she keeps a copy of the barristers’ oath at her desk. “This is fundamental to who we are and how we practise, and now it’s gone,” she said.
A lawyer who identified herself as a provincial offences prosecutor said she’s been disturbed by a recent trend of justices of the peace referring to paralegals as “officers of the court” or “friends of the court.” “We are no longer a profession,” she said. “I think it’s a mistake.”
Like Jordan Furlong
“I’m far more interested in the language used by the lawyers to describe their concerns. What’s at play here is more significant than semantics — it’s an illustration of the visceral reactions provoked when members of a group long accustomed to exclusivity and privilege suddenly find those characteristics slipping away.”
Enough said: George Wilkinson's blog 