A high-profile Canadian employment lawyer is to be disciplined this morning over his hardball tactics against some of his firm’s dissatisfied clients, after two of them posted critical reviews online and a third refused to pay her bill.
The Law Society of Ontario alleges that Lior Samfiru was “abusive, offensive or otherwise inconsistent” with professional standards when he threatened to sue, or did sue, three former clients of his firm.
He’s expected to be formally reprimanded and ordered to pay $5,000 in costs. Records filed ahead of the hearing show Samfiru acknowledges he committed professional misconduct and has apologized.
He did not reply to CBC News’s request for comment sent Monday evening.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A high-profile Canadian employment lawyer is to be disciplined this morning over his hardball tactics against some of his firm’s dissatisfied clients, after two of them posted critical reviews online and a third refused to pay her bill.
The records — including emails between Samfiru and three former clients, lawsuits his firm filed against two of them, and an agreed statement of facts — show the $600-an-hour solicitor didn’t shy from using the threat of expensive litigation.
A client identified in the records as IK, for confidentiality reasons, posted a negative review on Google after she didn’t like her consultation with one of the firm’s junior lawyers in 2021.
(CBC News found some variation of the slogan “You don’t pay unless we win” in about two dozen spots on the firm’s website, with the proviso that this arrangement is offered “where appropriate.”)
He acknowledged to her new lawyers that a claim for misrepresentation against an ex-client was “novel” but said the case merited it because she had “sought to fabricate allegations against our firm” to avoid having to pay her bill.
“You will have to hire a lawyer and go through thousands of dollars in fees,” he wrote, again instructing a cc’ed colleague to sue for " $250K in damages plus $100K in punitives, if his review is still online at noon today."
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