Convocation allocated a $22.3 million budget to a series of initiatives that included LSO Connects
Seven months after launching LSO Connects, the online tool that lawyers, paralegals, and members of the public must use to access Law Society of Ontario services, lawyers remain baffled by the tool’s many ongoing glitches and say they raise broader questions about the value that the legal regulator brings to the profession.
“People are upset,” says Pulat Yunusov, a sole practitioner in Toronto. “If lawyers are upset about [a] website in 2025, if lawyers are upset about their regulator’s compliance portal in 2025, this is an unbelievable waste.
“We have much more important problems in the legal profession than this,” Yunusov adds. “And today, it should be a matter of very little expense and effort to have a good website.”
Anita Szigeti, who also runs her own firm, references the substantial pay raise that some members of the LSO’s leadership approved for Diana Miles, the regulator’s recently-ousted chief executive officer, without the knowledge or approval of its governing board.
“A lot of licensees are reflecting on the value for money that we’re getting from the law society at this time, particularly when we put the services that benefit us and the amount of money that we pay against what we now know are the kinds of expenditures that we heard about in this scandal,” Szigeti says.
“A lot of things are being brought into very sharp focus for licensees, and I think many, many lawyers are asking themselves: what are they doing with my money?” Szigeti says. “Why do we have a platform that’s cumbersome, difficult to use, unhelpful in places? They clearly have a ton of money to burn.”
Pointing to Miles’ pay hike, Aaron Baer, a partner at Renno & Co, adds that many lawyers have “a lot of questions about the LSO in general. A lot of people don't feel valued.
“There's a lot of frustration with how much lawyers are paying [in] fees, what the value of the LSO is, and how the LSO handles these situations,” he says.
Launched last August, LSO Connects is the tool licensees must use to complete mandatory administrative tasks like paying annual LSO fees and responding to spot audits by the regulator. Licensing candidates use the tool to register for exams, administrative licensing, and more.
The tool replaces multiple systems members previously used to complete the same tasks. On Thursday, an LSO spokesperson told Law Times that LSO Connects is part of a broader, multi-year effort to retire those fragmented legacy systems and unify them into a single platform. The spokesperson said the lack of a centralized tool previously hindered functions like data access, which the regulator needs to support its decision-making.
Convocation, the LSO’s governing board, had approved a budget of $22.3 million for a series of initiatives that included LSO Connects and a “customer relationship management solution” to support licensing, practice audits, membership services, and more. Noting that the total project was under budget, the spokesperson said the regulator selected the vendor that designed LSO Connects by “following a rigorous and competitive procurement process.”
In the months since its launch, LSO Connects has encountered myriad issues. Multiple news releases on the regulator’s website indicate system issues, glitches, and high volumes of inquiries from LSO members. On at least two occasions, the LSO informed members there would be no consequences – including administrative suspension – if members could not meet certain administrative deadlines due to technical issues.
The regulator’s spokesperson said that as of April 2, the percentage of licensees who met their annual fee, report, and continuing professional development deadlines on March 31 was consistent with past years. However, the number of questions the regulator fielded from licensees increased.
But some lawyers are still concerned. One lawyer based outside of Canada but licensed in Ontario says they have been back and forth with the LSO for more than three months, trying to troubleshoot glitches ahead of annual filing deadlines. The LSO’s responses have either been unhelpful or incomplete, according to the lawyer, who asked not to be named.
Some of these issues stem from LSO Connects’ failure to accommodate lawyers based outside of Canada, like fields that cannot be populated by foreign phone numbers and addresses. The lawyer says the LSO also levied nearly $500 in fee adjustments without notice and was told they could either pay the fees or surrender their license.
The LSO told the lawyer that a notice was sent to all licensees, but the lawyer says similarly-situated colleagues working outside Ontario also reported not receiving a notice.
Szigeti, who had access to an earlier, “absolutely unworkable” version of LSO Connects before its wider launch last summer, says the tool has significantly improved since she first encountered it but needs further adjusting. She points to recent correspondence with the regulator, which she pursued through the LSO Connects messaging portal. Szigeti, who practises mental health law, wanted to inform the LSO that an individual had threatened to file a complaint against her. The lawyer says that while such threats have been rare in her decades-long career, she was taught to bring them to the LSO’s attention as soon as she learned about them.
“In the past, I would simply send a little email explaining, please expect potentially a complaint from so and so about me,” Szigeti says. “It would be acknowledged. Maybe someone would call me. There’d be a conversation.”
This time, the LSO told Szigeti it was no longer accepting self-reports and directed her to file a formal complaint in which she would both be the complainant and the object of the complaint. “I thought that was ridiculous,” she says.
“If you surveyed the 70,000 legal professionals in Ontario, I would really like to know who is prepared to fill out a formal complaint against themselves… rather than just make an informal communication that this has happened,” she adds. “I don't think anyone's going to do it. I couldn't bring myself to do it.”
In a LinkedIn post last year, Yunusov posted a screenshot of an error message he had received from LSO Connects. He had tried to log his continuing professional development hours, but when he entered “0” in the “minutes” field, he received a message that the field's value had to fall between five and 55.
“This is a 1995 level of mistake,” Yunusov told Law Times. He has also encountered issues updating his address on the platform.
“I don’t care what vendor they hired to implement this new LSO Connects. They have [to have] a person on staff who has to review every single form and has to say, ‘You know what? It looks terrible,’” he says. He adds that he decided to post about his issues on LinkedIn rather than contact the LSO through its support channels because he believed the LSO was more likely to respond to the post.
In March, the LSO posted an update on its website that acknowledged specific issues licensees had reported since LSO Connects’ launch. Acting CEO Priya Bhatia told Law Times that the regulator is responding to feedback and regularly updating the tool.
“We understand that a change of this size can be difficult to navigate. The law society is committed to supporting licensees through this transition with a number of resources,” Bhatia said.
Baer says he believes the LSO’s communication about the tool has improved recently. However, he maintains that the platform is not intuitive. “The fact that so much time and money went into this, and now we’re wasting so much time – and therefore money – of lawyers and other paraprofessionals is not good,” he says. ‘It’s embarrassing.”
Yunusov says he worries that the LSO’s costs will rise due to the high volume of complaints it has received about LSO Connects.
“Everything costs money. When will people finally understand this?” he asks. “And this money is ultimately coming out of lawyers’ pockets.”
