A screenshot from Scott McCluskey's Twitter page, claiming to practice law.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Twitter
Republished October 21, 2021 - 7:48 AM
Original Publication Date October 20, 2021 - 3:18 PM
The B.C. Law Society is appealing to a judge to help stop a Kelowna man from holding himself out as a lawyer.
The society alleges in a petition that Scott McCluskey told several people — including in several alleged threats — that he has been a lawyer for 30 years.
In an email, McCluskey denied the allegations, saying the only law he ever practiced was in cases where he represented himself.
"I do not have clients, never billed anyone, because I have never offered legal services,” he said. "I have never passed the bar, nor claimed I had."
This, despite the fact he owns a website claiming to be a legal firm offering legal services, which also lists a lawyer and a “paralegal, Forensic accountant” on staff, as well as testimonials.
When asked, he said: “The website is a spoof. Do you believe everything on the Internet?”
That website, Optik Law, calls McCluskey the “founder, Partner” and describes McCluskey like this: "A graduate from Harvard, he is our resident expert in Canadian Constitutional Law, and Civil Litigation Law, and vast experience in Canadian Criminal Law. When you need your Business/Family or Friends, protected, he's who you want in your corner.”
He also offers a disclaimer that "some specialists are non-bar-associated. Individual results will vary. No remuneration… charged. We provide results, for our clients. Satisfactions, (sic) based on agreed upon preliminary summaries and mutual expectations."
Despite a “testimonial” from a retired Kelowna psychologist — who would neither confirm nor deny he wrote the testimonial — that proclaims McCluskey as a “certifiable genius, top 2-5%”, the website is littered with spelling and grammatical errors.
Harvard University also says it has no records of a Scott McCluskey earning a degree at Harvard.
The Law Society says Optik Law is not registered with the Society, nor a registered company in B.C. The other members of his team are also nowhere to be found either in the society’s registry or even through a basic Google search.
McCluskey has not formally responded to the petition and none of the allegations made have been proven in court.
The Society said it received several complaints that McCluskey held himself as a lawyer and Optik Law as his law firm. He wrote to a lawyer for Interior Savings Credit Union about a matter in which he held a financial interest, demanding the proceeding be settled out of court.
He claimed in that letter to have “never lost a single criminal, civil or constitutional law case in 25 years or ever” and signed it as a “lawyer.”
The society also has other affidavits suggesting he told two other people, including one police officer, that he is a lawyer and has practiced law.
In his email, McCluskey focused most of his writing about these affidavits. They occurred during a dispute with the owner of a pub in Port McNeil because McCluskey claimed to hold a valid medical exemption from wearing a mask.
McCluskey went into great detail about how he has been discriminated against because he doesn’t wear a mask and denied entry to several businesses. On the Optik Law website, he also includes a lengthy missive about the Constitutionality of public health orders and citing “friend” Dr. Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro.
"We at OPTIK LAW, can help you, see what you need to see...and hold Accountable for the profound abuses of Fundamental Canadian Law our Constitution Rights t, and make them pay...Thats not to Judge, only a court of Law a Judge a Jury and the Ultimate arbiter, GOD, gets to weigh the scales of Lady Justice, whom is BLIND...and only GOD Judges,” he wrote in the blog section. Grammatical and other errors were re-produced exactly as they appear.
iNFOnews.ca tried to confirm the testimonials, including several from B.C. and other Canadian lawyers, that appear on his page.
One lawyer, Kate Saunders, denied she wrote or offered her testimonial, while none of the others responded by deadline. Another testimonial, ostensibly from a lawyer in Ontario, is not registered with the Law Society of Ontario either.
— This story was updated at 7:43 a.m. Oct. 21 to include information from Harvard University that no student named Scott McCluskey earned a degree there.
To contact a reporter for this story, email Marshall Jones or call 250-718-2724 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.
We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above.
News from © iNFOnews, 2021