Lawyer suspended for raft of transgressions

A Winnipeg lawyer has been suspended indefinitely for improperly asking a client for cash, failing to show up to court on several occasions and not responding to the law society while it investigated him.

Chad Russell Sutherland, 43, was handed the indefinite suspension and fined $6,000 by the Law Society of Manitoba’s disciplinary committee last month, after it found him guilty of professional misconduct.

Sutherland didn’t attend last month’s hearing, nor did he appoint a lawyer to represent him, despite being notified, the panel said as it made public its decision Wednesday.

In April 2025, the law society revoked his practising certificate owing to his failure to comply with conditions it had previously imposed on him.

Two months later, Sutherland encountered a former client on the street and asked her repeatedly for money over two days.

He told her the amount he wanted was a “substantial reduction” from what she owed for work he had done when he was associated with a local law firm.

She declined to pay and reminded him that he had told her payments had to be made to the firm.

The panel said Sutherland’s efforts to get the client to pay him directly were dishonest.

“As trite as it is to state it, integrity is indispensable to a lawyer’s character and work,” wrote the panel.

“Trying to persuade a client to make a payment for legal services directly to him, which on its face amounted to cheating the member’s former firm where the services were performed, clearly undermines public confidence in the trustworthiness and the ethics of the legal profession.”

When Sutherland represented another client on criminal charges last year, he failed to show up to three pretrial conferences in the Court of King’s Bench, even after the judge directed it was imperative that he appear in court for the last scheduled date.

“Courts cannot function efficiently when lawyers repeatedly fail to attend conferences, particularly when the presiding judge has directed that it is ‘imperative’ that the lawyer appear,” wrote the panel.

The law society, as it probed Sutherland’s requests for cash from a client and his failures to appear in court, wrote him emails on 10 occasions from May to December last year, asking him to respond to the investigation. He never did.

The panel found that the law society cannot fulfil its duty to protect the public interest when lawyers who are under investigation are unresponsive.

The panel said Sutherland’s transgressions, while serious, are not worthy of disbarment.

Sutherland was called to the bar in 2018 in Manitoba and had no previous discipline history with the law society. He’s not a member of any other Canadian law society.

Having practised law for seven years, Sutherland is not a “junior” member of the bar, said the panel, but in the absence of details about where he has practised law over the years and lacking evidence about his present circumstances, the panel agreed with the society that he should be suspended.

Sutherland has the right to submit evidence to the law society to persuade its disciplinary committee to vary or rescind the order.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca