The lawyer in this case was a sole practitioner who primarily practised refugee law. He was responsible for supervising non-lawyers and two Hungarian interpreters when he delegated the task of preparing PIFs to a non-licensee. He did so with little supervision. The lawyer was found to have “breached Rules 2.01(2) and 5.01(2) of the Rules of Professional Conduct by failing to serve Roma clients with respect to their refugee claims and the manner that he ran his law practice and supervised non-lawyer staff).
The lawyer was found to have failed to serve to the standard of a competent lawyer by failing to prepare adequate PIFs for eight complaints over 21 months. This resulted in a significant impact on his clients, including deportation. The lawyer’s licence was suspended, and his law practice had to be supervised for one year.
Law Society of Upper Canada v Farkas, 2017 ONLSTH 75.
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