Within days of his inauguration, President Barack Obama issued an executive order shutting down the prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay — but only after another year of operation.

In today’s unstable economic environment, Canadian businesses will look to cut costs where they can. Law firms, big or small, will be no different. Most law firms fall into the small business category of less than 99 employees, which make up 97.8 per cent of all businesses operating in Canada, according to StatsCan.

Everyone’s looking for someone to blame for the economic mess.

The rule of law in Zimbabwe has suffered several tremendous knocks. It is clear that the law, judicial officials, from the lowest to the highest courts, and state lawyers have been tainted and some subverted.

For some, self-regulation of the legal profession is sacrosanct and should not be tampered with. For as long as Canada has been a country, and even before that, lawyers have been given the responsibility to govern their own profession, in the public’s best interest, of course. 

By the time you read this column, despite the extraordinary events in our Parliament that happened at the end of last year, the process of replacing Michel Bastarache as a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada will be over and Thomas Cromwell will likely have been sworn in as the new justice.