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| Anita Szigeti |
Some groups, like the Federation of Ontario Law Associations (FOLA), Women in Canadian Criminal Defence (WiCCD) and the Law and Mental Disorder Association (LAMDA), have already come out with compelling positions in support of transparency and accountability. But the profession has yet to hear decisively from many other large organizations.
In the 2023 bencher election, many of the biggest organizations lent their support to the Good Governance Coalition (GGC), which ran as a group against another group. The GGC was successful in that they were all — all 40 of them — voted in, which was the goal.
The coalition’s stated primary goal was to safeguard self-regulation of the legal profession. Their worry was that if we are not effective in regulating the profession ourselves, as lawyers and paralegals, it will be taken from us, like it has been since then, for example, by the government in British Columbia.
The recent crisis that’s brewing around the scandal regarding former Law Society of Ontario (LSO) CEO Diana Miles’s compensation is actually about professional regulation. The LSO is stubbornly refusing to release information that would inform us about the professional conduct of some members of convocation — for example, some benchers and lawyers.
Based on media reports, it’s at least possible that several of those elected as part of this coalition may have played a role in this escalating scandal that is currently engulfing the society. Based on licensees’ social media expressions, and in the opinion of many, this scandal is certainly driving the LSO toward losing self-regulation.
Most of our current benchers obviously did not have the slightest involvement in this fiasco — we can’t be sure of course, because they’re not allowed to say — but given the nature of the controversy is the very fact that convocation had been kept in the dark, it is nonetheless safe to assume that most were never involved. That’s actually the presenting problem.
I personally have no horse in this race (indeed I’m not even convinced we are able to make a real go now of self-governance at all given what’s happened here), but I just flag and warn that this scandal will not resolve without disclosure of that report. The other option of course is a wholesale removal of everyone currently in convocation, if we never receive assurances that anyone actually implicated has been identified and the appropriate measures, which any lawyer similarly situated would face, have been put in place.
Otherwise, what this looks like is convocation closing ranks to protect its benchers, regardless of potential misconduct that may have cost us, due-paying licensees, millions of our hard-earned fees. In my opinion, it is naive to believe that 70,000 legal professionals will stand for that, regardless of the passage of time. This is never going to blow over, no matter how hard anyone is trying to sweep it under the carpet.
If lawyer organizations want to return the members they had championed and continue to trust to convocation, or even keep them there, we have to be able to hear from them what position they are taking internally now on these issues and how they’re voting, and they have to be able to tell us they were not involved in this.
Calls are mounting to get rid of everyone in convocation as the whole place is tainted by this scandal.
We’re handing ourselves over to this provincial government to regulate, much like comedian Jim Gaffigan says we hand ourselves over to the bears to be eaten on a white plate covered in honey when we play dead to avoid being killed and eaten.
What’s happening now is more than misguided or short-sighted. Respectfully, it’s, let’s say, profoundly unwise. The inaction, the silence, the hand-wringing, the suggestion that the law society is still discussing its decision whether to release the report and will let us know if or when they ever make one, is all risking that convocation and as a result, self-governance, will appear so dysfunctional it will simply self-destruct.
If what’s important to these organizations is to keep their own candidates in power, they must push to let them speak out now.
If what’s important is hanging on to self-governance, we have to push for the release of that report.
I would implore all lawyer organizations to issue strong statements in support of transparency and accountability, release of the O’Connor report, and minimally the release of voting records on these critically important issues and a removal of the gag orders that currently serve to punish benchers who’ve done absolutely nothing wrong — as they too are taking the brunt of the rising forceful criticism from legal professionals governed by the law society.
Anita Szigeti is the principal lawyer at Anita Szigeti Advocates, a boutique Toronto law firm specializing in mental health justice litigation. She is the founder of two national volunteer lawyer associations: the Law and Mental Disorder Association and Women in Canadian Criminal Defence and co-author of five textbooks on mental health law. Find her on LinkedIn, follow her on Twitter and on her blog.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada, or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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