The Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) began a three-week trial Tuesday at the British Columbia Supreme Court (BCSC) challenging the 2024 Legal Professions Act (LPA), arguing the new legislation threatens the bar’s independence.
The Attorney General of British Columbia provided a written submission which called the LSBC’s position “indefensible in our representative democracy”, construing it as a matter of “whether lawyers enjoy complete and total immunity from any kind of democratic regulation.”
The government’s maintains that the LPA’s objective is to streamline regulations, improve access to legal services, and enact reforms concerning Indigenous reconciliation.
The LPA received royal assent in May 2024 and will replace the LSBC with a new governing board of directors to regulate lawyers, notaries, and paralegals. The LPA’s new regulator will be governed by a 17-person board that includes nine seats for lawyers, five of whom would be elected by BC lawyers and four of whom would be appointed by the board. The LSBC was previously overseen by a board of 25 lawyers elected by other lawyers and six non-lawyers appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council.
The LSBC presents arguments on several constitutional fronts: whether the independence of the bar is an unwritten principle of the Canadian Constitution, what the “meaning and content” of the principle of the bar’s independence is, and whether the Constitution Act, 1867 grants the BC legislature the authority to enact the LPA.
Lawson Lundell LLP partner Craig Ferris, representing the LSBC, argued that the LPA threatens to replace lawyers’ ability to regulate their profession with undue government interference.
“Without self-governance and self-regulation, there is an institutional opening of the door to government control and interference,” Ferris said, adding that “the manner in which lawyers are regulated impact the manner in which they carry on their duties to clients, courts, and the administration of justice.”
On July 17, B.C. Supreme Court Justice J. Mariam Gropper denied the LSBC and Trial Lawyers Association of BC (TLABC) attempt to halt transitional work towards the new legal regulator with an interim injunction. Gropper ruled that the LSBC and TLABC had failed to provide evidence that the LPA would cause “irreparable harm” to the independence of the legal profession. The LSBC has therefore been forced to appoint four of its members to a transitional board to help the B.C. government implement the LPA.
The Attorney General of B.C., the TLABC, and intervenors including the Canadian Bar Association, the Law Foundation of B.C., the Law Society of Manitoba, and the Society of Notaries Public of B.C. will also present arguments at the trial.