Law society revises lawyer's misconduct penalty

The Law Society of Saskatchewan (LSS) has reconsidered the misconduct penalty it will impose on a lawyer who once faced disbarment and was given a bill in excess of $58,000.

Prince Albert lawyer Peter V. Abrametz, whose professional misconduct case hung around the courts for years, has now been “granted permission to resign his membership” with the LSS, and his bill for the legal costs associated with his case has been cut by more than half to $25,000 — an amount he's already paid.

That follows an order that came down from the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal in October, which asked the LSS to reconsider the penalty it imposed after it found Abrametz guilty of conduct unbecoming of a lawyer following a 2017 hearing.

The lawyer's trouble with the LSS dates all the way back to 2012, when the oversight body began an audit investigation into his financial records.

On “the eve of a visit by investigators to his office,” he “self-reported” to the LSS that he'd failed to deposit money into his office account, according to a summary by the Supreme Court, which once made a ruling in his case regarding delays.

Through an investigation, and a subsequent hearing, the LSS found that, first, on seven occasions he took money from clients without having it first deposited in his firm's account.

Second, he wrote three cheques from his trust account to a fictitious person, enabling him to receive payments “off the books.”

Third, that he created records for the aforementioned transactions that didn't accurately reflect them.

And finally, that he advanced money to clients in a way that breached the LSS code of conduct, which prohibits lawyers from entering into a debtor-creditor relationship with their clients.

In January 2019, the LSS released its initial decision to disbar Abrametz, which was appealed, giving rise to the lengthy legal saga.

Saskatchewan's top court found the LSS had, in its initial decision, a narrow focus on the “seriousness of the offences and the potential impact on the reputation of the profession and the LSS,” and therein failed to conduct a proper analysis of whether the penalty was proportional.

Taking direction from the court, the LSS considered a number of factors to be mitigating in the case, including that: Abrametz self-reported and co-operated with the investigation, he practised under conditions for around six years, and he had a long career with a lack of a prior record.

Factors it viewed as aggravating included: the vulnerability of some of the affected clients; the amount of money involved; that the conduct was deliberate, prolonged and included serious trust account violations; and that Abrametz went as far as to “create a fictitious person in carrying out the conduct.”