The annual conference was held on October 24-26, 2024 at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University. Richard Devlin, founding President of CALE/ACEJ, was the conference coordinator. He was assisted by Rebecca Parker. They did a terrific job and made all attendees very welcome.

The conference was generously supported by the law school, the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, the Law Foundation of Nova Scotia, Cox & Palmer and McInnes Cooper.

The conference featured three special events: the Wickwire Lecture, delivered by Justice Alice Woolley of the Alberta Court of Appeal (and a former President of CALE/ACEJ); a debate between former law deans Adam Dodek and Jula Hughes about the correctness of Justice Jamal’s recusal in the appeal about Quebec’s secularism legislation; and a book launch of Heenan Blaikie: The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law firm by Adam Dodek. Each of these events found considerable favour with their audiences.

The regulation panel focused on anti-money laundering efforts by the legal profession, looking at rules about client identification, cash transactions and use of trust accounts. The subsequent debate raised some concerns about whether the courts have adopted an overly broad definition of privilege in this area. The panel was highly topical, as FINTRAC had two days earlier issued a special bulletin about lawyers and money laundering.

The teaching panel offered cautionary tales about the challenges of teaching legal ethics, some of which related to capturing and holding student interest and some of which related to staffing the course.

There were 12 presentations of research in progress, covering a wide range of topics. These included incorporation of Inuit social values into the regulation of Arctic shipping, possible limits on prosecutors’ use of “inflammatory” evidence, proposals for Indigenous involvement in the governance of the profession in British Columbia, the limits of lawyers’ expertise, the impact of religious identity on legal practice, connections between societal affiliations and legal ethics, ethics in the specific context of tax law, and debate about the merits of the profession’s monopoly on providing legal services.

All sessions ended with challenging and thoughtful questions from a highly engaged and supportive audience. This aspect continues to make the conference a venue of choice for presenting one’s work. Several junior scholars expressed pleasure at the opportunity to present to audiences that included several of the more senior scholars with whose work they were engaged in their research.

The hospitality was warm and provided excellent opportunities to discuss and debate issues in legal ethics and professionalism and to catch up with colleagues old and new. The formal conference dinner was held at a restaurant overlooking Halifax harbour.

The 2025 conference will be hosted in Winnipeg by the University of Manitoba.