Changes put forward include significantly reducing the proportion of elected lawyers in Convocation
The Law Society of Ontario’s proposals to slash the proportion of elected lawyers in Convocation and enact other changes to its governance model have drawn criticism from some lawyers, who say the reforms will disrupt the legal industry’s ability to self-regulate.
The LSO introduced the proposed changes in an Oct. 31 report by its governance review task force, which was organized to make the law society more effective at fulfilling its mandate. The LSO is accepting public feedback about the changes until Jan. 31.
The most significant proposal involves reducing the size of Convocation from 54 benchers to 30. Sixteen of the benchers, including 14 lawyers and two paralegals, would be elected. The remaining 14 benchers, which include four lawyers and other professionals, would be appointed by an LSO board and the Ontario government.
The change would effectively give elected lawyers a minority at Convocation. Currently, forty of the 54 benchers are elected lawyers, giving them 74 percent of the vote. The proposed changes would reduce that proportion to 46 percent.
Other proposed reforms include establishing a committee to recommend bencher appointments, creating a new bencher category, reducing maximum bencher terms from 12 years to eight years, imposing new voting restrictions, and filling vacancies left by elected benchers through annual by-elections.
“This current governance review task force report is a huge step in the direction of cancelling out self-governance of the legal profession,” says John Fagan, a former LSO bencher.
“This has to be resisted,” he adds. “Citizens need lawyers who can challenge government and can challenge powerful business entities. [They] need lawyers who do not derive their status from any entity not controlled by them.”
Ontario Bar Association president Kathryn Manning expressed similar concerns. At a meeting last week, the LSO assured OBA executive director Elizabeth Hall and policy staff that the proposed reforms are “not a fait accompli,” Manning says. “The governance review task force is genuinely looking for feedback on their initial proposal, and I'm confident that they will be taking input seriously.”
However, as the proposal currently stands, “The balance of power would be held by appointees and other members outside the profession, so the OBA is very concerned about that,” Manning says. “We can't protect self-regulation by taking the ‘self’ out of ‘self-regulation.’”
Manning argues that the bar’s ability to effectively protect the public hinges on its ability to self-govern. “Lawyers on the front lines – from large firms to sole practitioners to in-house – combine an understanding of the needs of the public and the realities of practice,” she says. “This perspective is crucial to determining who should govern and how.”
The LSO’s proposed reforms were published on the heels of similar developments in British Columbia. Last May, the BC NDP passed the Legal Professions Act, or Bill 21, which will replace the Law Society of British Columbia with a single regulatory body that oversees lawyers, paralegals, and notaries across the province. That new regulatory body’s governance board features a significantly smaller proportion of elected lawyers than the LSBC.
Two lawsuits are currently challenging Bill 21.
Most of the LSO’s proposed reforms would take effect during the next bencher election in April 2027. However, the proposed changes to how the law society fills elected bencher vacancies will go into effect this year if Convocation approves them.
In its report, the governance review task force noted that the LSO’s board is more than twice the size of any other Canadian law society, except the LSBC. The task force argued that the current size and composition of the board make it difficult to make decisions in a timely manner.
However, Fagan believes that politics motivated the proposed reforms. He cited the political fissure that has divided LSO benchers since 2019 when a coalition of lawyers who branded themselves as StopSOP gained a majority of the lawyer seats on the LSO board. Fagan served as a bencher from 2019 to 2023 and was part of that group.
StopSOP, which has since rebranded as FullStop, initially organized to protest an LSO statement of principles that required all lawyers and paralegals to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion through their work. In 2023, another group of lawyers formed the Good Governance Coalition to challenge FullStop. They swept that year’s bencher election.
Fagan argues StopSOP’s success at challenging LSO rules in 2019 led “directly to this current effort to discourage slates in the future” by upping the proportion of appointed benchers at Convocation. This “blue ribbon panel” method would allow the LSO to more effectively “block elected slates from mounting effective challenges in the future,” Fagan says.
“Political control is what they're after,” he says. “They think they know best, and they want to make sure that they remain in the driver's seat.” Fagan notes that the three-month comment period for the proposed reforms signals that “they want this done fast, fast, fast.”
An LSO spokesperson told Canadian Lawyer that the period that the LSO gives the public to comment on issues typically varies between three to six months. The length of each comment window is based on multiple factors, including the nature or complexity of the proposals and Convocation’s schedule.
The spokesperson said one of the “fundamental objectives” of the proposed reforms “is to facilitate effective discussion, debate and decision-making by ensuring a diversity of voices and perspectives on the board.” She added that a new category of benchers, which will be appointed by an independent committee based on transparent criteria, will provide the “opportunity to appoint board members who have the backgrounds and skills necessary to ‘round out’ the complement of elected board members.”
However, Manning, who identified tackling “unprecedented polarization in the bar” as a priority when she became president of the OBA, is uncertain that the proposed changes can close the LSO’s political divide.
“It is sometimes tempting to think that polarization can be remedied by reducing the number of people in the conversation and narrowing the extent to which the governed are engaged in selecting their governors. That is, at best, a temporary stitch,” she says. “The real remedy to polarization is more conversation, not less, and more engagement, not less.”
