A long journey came to an end this July with the publication of the consolidated CBA Code of Professional Conduct. The journey started around the turn of the century with the announcement that the Code would be studied with a view to undertaking revisions. The CBA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility published consultative reports in 2002 and 2003, and a final report in March 2004. Numerous changes were adopted at the CBA's annual meeting in August 2004 and the mid-winter meeting in 2006. It is only with the publication of the consolidated Code that these changes are reflected in the document available at the CBA website and in hard copies.

The CBA is a professional organization, as opposed to a regulatory body like the Law Society of British Columbia or Ontario's Law Society of Upper Canada. Yet it holds a storied place in the development of Canadian ethical codes. The CBA published the first such code in 1920, and for a great many years set the standard for the codes used by Canadian law societies. By the late 1990s, however, the CBA's place at the forefront of professional regulation was suffering. Many law societies, most particularly Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia, had extensively revamped their codes, and in doing so had moved away from the CBA template. By the time the CBA adoped the recent revisions, it had been almost 20 years since the Code's last overhaul. Moreover, the vast majority of the case law, text and article references in the Code were from the 1950s and 1960s. The new CBA document, while not particularly ambitious in scope, and adhering more or less to the format of the previous version, is thus a welcome development in Canadian legal ethics.

To access the CBA Code of Professional Conduct click here.