This ‘cartel’ should be nixed
Law society’s ads just making lawyers more unaffordable
Despite the existence of legal aid (which is available only to people with the very lowest incomes and even then, only for certain legal matters), it may be fair to say that most Canadians can’t afford to hire a lawyer.
They lack access to justice, as the lingo goes. That means people represent themselves in court in matters that will determine their futures, even though they don’t have a working understanding of legal procedure or a basic knowledge of legal precedent. It slows down litigation, as judges have to guide self-represented parties through every step of the process, and not surprisingly, self-advocates are frequently tripped up by simple but important rules that trained lawyers can navigate in their sleep. So, lawyers being too expensive for most people’s budgets is a problem.
There are many possible solutions, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that making the practice of law more expensive for the lawyers themselves is not one of them. Which raises the question, why is the Law Society of Ontario raising the annual fees that lawyers and paralegals must pay to the governing body?
It must be because the society is short on cash needed to perform its regulatory function. Except, surely, if the Law Society of Ontario were short on cash, it wouldn’t be spending its members’ dues on useless feel-good ads announcing the society’s worthiness. And it wouldn’t be wasting cash buying up space for these ads in movie theatres and on subways.
Oh, hang on, what? It would? It is? Well, that seems weird. Isn’t the Law Society of Ontario embarrassed about being a monopoly that has to resort to commercials? Usually having exclusive control over a profession means never having to woo people to join. Oh, OK, the society isn’t embarrassed. Rather, it’s been boasting in press releases about “this public awareness campaign,” which it plans to continue into 2019. I suppose this makes a modicum of sense if you consider the justification that the society wants the public to know how they can use the society to find lawyers or to report lawyers’ abuses.
It makes less sense when the ads don’t seem to do that. At all. The Law Society of Ontario ads that I’ve seen have featured happy images of people of different races and religions, and have editorialized about how tolerant and diverse the society is, as well as claiming that it maintains very high standards for lawyers and paralegals. Which is, you know, nice. But not really of much use to a member of the public who is looking for a lawyer. Or wanting to call in a report about a paralegal who has behaved unethically. Sure, the lovely woman in the head scarf featured in the subway ad has a pleasant face, but what about a phone number for people to call to actually get help? Or even just a link to the group’s website? None of the ads I’ve seen has featured either one. Doling out meaningless slogans such as “Our society is your society” is unlikely to offer any clarity to the transit rider who doesn’t even know what the heck the law society is, let alone what it can do for her.
Clearly, I view it as a waste of cash for the law society to unleash a big ad campaign simply to toot its own horn about how progressive and inclusive it is. The law society apparently disagrees. This would be less of a problem if membership in the law society — and paying thousands of dollars of dues to the law society — were voluntary. But it’s not. Anyone who wants to work as a lawyer or paralegal in Ontario must join and fund the society … and all the society’s superfluous and ineffective public awareness campaigns. The costs will then be passed on to the clients.
One of the law society’s mandates is to “facilitate access to justice for the people of Ontario.” I can’t think of a quicker or easier way to do that than by breaking up the cartel that is the law society. Make membership voluntary so that only those lawyers who put value on these sorts of self-satisfied PR initiatives are forced to shell out for them, freeing up the rest of the legal profession to charge more competitive rates and break free from the inflexible elitism (yes, obsessive inclusivism can be its own form of elitism) of a society that sees itself as the guardian of a special club.