For several reasons, including rising legal costs and lack of access to justice, many Canadians do not seek out lawyers to help with their legal issues. In fact, 80% of the legal needs of Canadians are not served by the traditional approach used by lawyers.  

Earlier this year, the Law Society of Ontario Convocation took one step to address this issue by approving a five-year regulatory pilot which will allow any individual or entity (does not need to be a lawyer or paralegal) to apply to be part of a “Regulatory Sandbox for Innovative Technological Legal Services”. Once approved by the LSO, the participants in the program will be able to provide “innovative technological legal services” under the supervision of the LSO for a period of generally two years. This pilot program is important because it means that “non-lawyers” will be able to provide legal services to the public, something that has, up until now, only been reserved for licensees (lawyers and paralegals).

While it is unclear what type of programs or technological tools might be available to the public under this program, they could be similar to the legal tech services already available to lawyers and law firms, such as technology that analyzes or drafts contracts, legal research memos, wills or other testamentary documents, or perhaps analyzes case outcomes or predicts damages awards, etc.

The LSO anticipates opening the program to applicants in October 2021. It will be interesting to see who applies. Meanwhile, the LSO has just published the job posting for the manager of the regulatory sandbox, in case you are interested in applying!

Some feel that regulatory sandboxes are a good way to move legal innovation forward. However, others think it is not going far enough and want the LSO to stay out of regulating legal innovation all together.
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What are your thoughts? Let us know!

You can read more about it the pilot program here.

Lawyers are a self-governing profession in Ontario and we oversee our own regulation through the Law Society of Ontario. This month the LSO published a “Call for Comment” seeking feedback on suggested changes to the LSO’s governance structure. Comments are due October 15, 2018. Many lawyers may have missed the email, so we’ve summarized the key points for you here.

The Governance Task Force has identified four options to streamline the government structure at the LSO and are seeking your input on the following suggestions:

1. A smaller size for the LSO’s board and changes to the composition of the board:

Every four years lawyers and paralegals vote in a “bencher” election. Benchers are the LSO’s directors. The LSO’s board is currently called “Convocation”. The next bencher election is in 2019.

[Brief side note: Unfortunately, it appears that most lawyers are not interested in exercising their right to vote in the bencher elections. Voter turnout has basically decreased with every bencher election  with 56% of eligible voters choosing to vote in 1987, down  to only 33.84% of eligible voters voting in the 2015 election. Benchers are the people who decided to: change us from “members” to “licensees”; change the Law Society of Upper Canada to the Law Society of Ontario; and implement the Statement of Principles. All of which caused a strong reaction in the legal profession (both in support of and against these decisions). Benchers potentially hold a lot of power in determining how we govern ourselves, yet few lawyers appear to be interested in voting on who can make such decisions and how.]

Currently there are 45 elected benchers (40 lawyers and 5 paralegals) and 8 “lay benchers” appointed by the government. There are also 35 ex officio benchers (such as former Treasurers, former attorney generals and “life benchers” who have been grandparented in after the 2010 governance reform which ended ex officio offices) as well as the Treasurer and the Attorney General, which makes up 90 members of Convocation.

One example to streamline LSO governance, as suggested by the Governance Task Force, is to keep the current make-up of benchers but remove the ex officio positions which were grandparented in.

Another suggestion is to reduce the number of elected positions to 29 and add 3 LSO appointments (in an attempt achieve greater diversity).

​A third example is to reduce the number of elected positions even more to 20 and have a higher number of appointed positions: 7.

2. Changes to the Treasurer’s Term

The Task Force is also exploring changes to the Treasurer’s term, which is officially a one-year term but by convention is a two-year term (the Treasurer runs un-opposed for the second term). The suggestion is to make the Treasurer’s term a two-year term. Another option is to impose a Treasurer “ladder” with a vice president, president, past-president or two vice presidents and a president.

3. Changes to the Bencher terms

Currently a bencher term is four years with a 12-year term limit. The Call for Comment suggests both a shorter term and shorter term limit.

4. New Terminology

The fourth area for potential change is in the terminology we use. The Governance Task Force provided the option of changing Treasurer to President, as there may be confusion over the role of the Treasurer (i.e. people may think he or she is only responsible for financial matters rather than the whole board).

Along with this would be a change from the term "Convocation" to either Board, Board of Directors, Board of Governors, or Council and a change of the name "Bencher" to Board Member, Council Member, Director or Governor.

The LSO is taking the view that if they do go ahead and change the governance structure, significant changes must occur gradually. Some changes requiring legislative amendment would occur following the 2019 bencher election and would be in place for the 2023 bencher term.

Interested in learning more? Read the full report here. To comment you can fill out this online form.

Comments are due OCTOBER 15, 2018 

**For more information on this topic see Adam Dodek's article on SLAW called Public Interest Regulation: Governance Reform at the Law Society of Ontario. 

BENCHER ELECTIONS:

Are you interested in lawyer and paralegal governance? Do you want to have your say? Well there is a bencher election coming up in 2019. Consider running for a position on the board/convocation. The key dates are set out below:

Close of nominations:    February 8, 2019
Election day:                     April 30, 2019
First day in office:            May 23, 2019
 

​The Professional Development and Competence Committee of the Law Society of Ontario commissioned a survey to research the experiences of articling students as part of its licensing process review. The survey was aimed at lawyers who had completed their articles between 2014 and 2017. A summary of the results was recently released. 

The Law Society reported that while the survey was undertaken as part of the review of the licensing process, one section of the survey related to sexual harassment and racial and gender discrimination. The Law Society decided to make the report public to “add to the current conversations around harassment and discrimination, and to help facilitate a wider discussion and champion a necessary culture shift”.

One of the questions asked was:  “At any time in your articling process, do you feel that you faced any comments or conduct related to your age, ancestry, colour, race, citizenship, ethnic origin, place of origin, creed, disability, family status, marital status, gender identity, gender expression, sex and/or sexual orientation that was unwelcome?”

21% of the 1471 respondents of the survey answered “Yes”.

When asked: “At any time in your articling process, do you feel that you faced any unequal or differential treatment related to your age, ancestry, colour, race, citizenship, ethnic origin, place of origin, creed, disability, family status, marital status, gender identity, gender expression, sex and/or sexual orientation?”

17% of the respondents answered “Yes”.

These numbers are not insignificant.

Other information in the survey revealed that while most of the respondents were paid above $40,000.00 (36% were paid between $40-60K and 32% were paid more than $60k) there are still articling students who are paid nothing (4%) or who are paid less than $20k (8%) for their articles. With 64% of the respondents indicating that they articled in costly Toronto or the GTA, it is hard to imagine how they can survive financially on no income or less than $20k.

A summary of the survey results can be found here. 

​There have been some changes happening at the Law Society in the last few months. Below is a quick run-down of some of the new developments:

1.LSUC No More
On September 28, 2017 the Benchers voted 38 to 11 to stop using the name Law Society of Upper Canada. On November 2, 2017 the Benchers voted to change the name to Law Society of Ontario, effective January 1, 2018. While a survey was sent to licensees with options for the new name, some lawyers expressed displeasure for not being consulted on the name change in the first place. More on this update can be found here.

2.Statement of Principles
In December 2016, after a four year consultation process, Convocation adopted 13 recommendations contained in the “Challenges Faced by Racialized Licensees Working Group Final Report”. One of those recommendations was for a requirement that all licensees create and abide by an individual statement of principles that acknowledges their obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally and in their behaviour toward colleagues, employees, clients and the public.

Some lawyers opposed the implementation of this new requirement. Opponents argued that the requirement imposed beliefs on lawyers and is contrary to the Charter. On December 1, 2017, Bencher Joe Groia filed a motion before Convocation requesting conscientious objectors be exempt from the requirement. The motion failed by a vote of 16 to 38.  More on the Statement of Principles can be found here.

3.Paralegal Update
Also on December 1, the Law Society approved, in principle, an action plan to help improve access to justice, which includes establishing a special licence for paralegals and others with appropriate training, to offer some family law legal services.

The action plan was developed in partnership with the Ministry of the Attorney General, in response to the 21 recommendations outlined in the Family Legal Services Review, which considered whether a broader range of service providers could deliver certain family law legal services. More on this initiative can be found here.

4.Contingency Fees
The Law Society also approved a report and recommendations developed by the Advertising and Fee Arrangements Issues Working Group dealing with the regulation of contingency fees “to facilitate legal representation at a fair and reasonable cost”. The recommendations include:

• The introduction of a mandatory standard contingency fee agreement;
• A 'Know Your Rights' guide for the public;
• Disclosure requirements on completion of an agreement;
• Requirement for legal professionals to publicly disclose the maximum contingency fee percentage they charge by practice area; and
• New reporting information required on licensees' (lawyers and paralegals) annual reports to the Law Society.

More about the Report and Recommendations can be found here.