Preface

• Author: Jonathan Shime/Ian Smith/Grace Hession David
• Pages: 19-19

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Preface

Very few of us, if any, went to law school with the dream of prosecuting or defending

complex, white-collar cases. The small, strange group of us who envisioned ourselves

as criminal lawyers imagined an exciting and rewarding career litigating murder cases

before a jury, or freeing a person wrongly charged or convicted of a crime. The idea

of sorting through thousands or even millions of pages of disclosure to successfully

prosecute or defend such a case had little appeal.

We have a secret to confess: the fraud cases we have worked on have been some of

the most interesting and fun work we have enjoyed as criminal lawyers.

The reality is that prosecution of white-collar oences is becoming more and more

common in our criminal justice system. We now recognize that such crimes can have

a significant impact on those who are defrauded and, more broadly, our economic

systems and markets. In the wake of several high-profile fraud cases (e.g., Earl Jones,

Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb, Conrad Black, Bernie Mado, Enron), the public,

the police, and the courts are increasingly interested in the investigation, prosecution,

and punishment of those who commit these types of oences. Police services across

Canada have now developed specialized units just to investigate fraud and white-collar

oences. Regulatory bodies are receiving increased funding and pursuing disciplinary

measures much more aggressively, and criminal cases are being prosecuted more vigor-

ously and, where guilt is found, punished more severely.

Therefore, it is important that those of us who work in the criminal justice and

regulatory systems understand how to properly litigate these cases, from both a pros-

ecutorial and defence perspective. To that end, we have written this book. For those

of you who already have an interest in or already litigate these types of cases, we hope

it is a useful tool. For those of you who may feel unsure about working on fraud cases

or intimidated by the idea of sorting through a file with thousands or millions of pages,

we hope this book encourages you to take the opportunity to work on such a file. They

are fascinating cases that will allow you to delve into previously unknown areas of the

law and the world. We know that you will enjoy these experiences as much as we do.

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