Memoirs of a Maverick Lawyer

Christopher English is a history professor at Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

Despite the unpopularity of lawyers in general, the public seems to
respect most individually and to have an appetite for the minutiae of
anecdote and personality that is catered to by the light and evanescent
sketches of people and cases contained in books such as this. If this is
a memoir of the author’s career as criminal-defence counsel for “a
passing parade of human frailty” personified by “minor petty
criminals, the fraud artists and their like,” he underestimates the
nature and contribution of his own career, for he had interesting and
important cases and, by his own account, sought creatively to expand the
range of pleas and stratagems available to counsel. The battered woman
syndrome and premenstrual tension as defences to criminal charges, or
aboriginal land claims against the federal government, were rare
propositions in the late 1950s. They would not receive judicial
legitimacy for another generation. To offer a mere one-page gloss on
Bonnie Robichaud’s precedent-making prosecution of her employer, a
Crown corporation, for sexual harassment is to underestimate, even to
devalue, the importance of the case and, presumably, his own
contribution to her success.

Macdonald should have written a serious book, if not one for legal
insiders. But entertaining readers need not be incompatible with quietly
instructing them. An account of what Rumpole would call his “old
darlings” would have gained depth and resonance from a measured
discussion of the issues their cases raised. Such an analysis would have
given substance to the accounts of clients, their plights, Macdonald’s
contribution to defending their interests, and how they fared at the
hands of the justice system. As it is, the author underestimates his
readers, and the cases he offers lack distinction, bite, or
significance. His memoirs stand as a lost opportunity—suitable as
light reading for an hour between planes, but a very thin wine, without
depth, complexity, or aftertaste.