VANCOUVER ? A recent law school grad has been rejected as a potential lawyer because he was caught cheating on a math exam and was sanctioned for plagiarism at the University of B.C.
The law society hearing panel initially decided in 2010 to allow the applicant into the articling program for new lawyers, finding the young man, who wasn?t named but identified only as Applicant 5, was now of good character and repute.
But another panel of benchers of the law society recently reviewed the initial decision and found the first panel erred in its findings.
The panel chair, after hearing the applicant?s explanations for plagiarism, said ?his evidence on this serious issue defies credulity.?
The law society heard that while the applicant was a first-year student at UBC in 1995, he was suspended from the university for one year and given a failing grade in Math 100 after he was caught trying to cheat by changing his answers on the exam paper after it had been marked and asking to have the mark changed.
He denied cheating on the exam repeatedly for more than nine years.
After changing programs, the applicant submitted a thesis in 2000 as part of the requirements for an honours Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, which he was granted in May that year. He was accepted into UBC?s law school in September, but was suspended two years later for plagiarism in a paper for Law 345.
When he applied as an articling student at the law society, he failed to disclose the suspension resulting from the 1995 math exam incident.
The credentials committee ordered a hearing and asked the applicant about the math exam cheating allegations. The applicant denied he had cheated and blamed the teaching assistant in the course.
The Law Society also obtained a copy of the applicant?s 2000 sociology honours thesis from UBC as part of a freedom of information request. It was 78 pages in length and contained plagiarized material. The applicant provided another, shorter version of his thesis, which contained no plagiarized material.
He said this was the version he submitted to the professor for marking. He told the panel his professor had asked him for a copy of his thesis much later and he must have delivered the wrong draft for archival purposes.
In setting aside the original decision to allow the applicant to become a lawyer, the panel concluded: ?The applicant?s elaborate explanation around Thesis B demonstrates that the applicant did not discharge the onus of proof that he is now ?of good character and repute and is fit to become a barrister and a solicitor of the Supreme Court?.?
An unsuccessful applicant cannot reapply to enrol in the articling program for two years after a decision denying a previous application.
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