Lawyer gets Q.C. designation
Penticton lawyer Michael Welsh has received a Queen’s Counsel designation — the highest honour in the profession. Welsh was among 27 lawyers across the province to receive the call this year.
“I was obviously very pleased and honoured,” he said in a phone interview Thursday from the Caribbean, where he’s on vacation with his wife.
Welsh learned of his new designation last week during a call with B.C. Attorney General David Eby, who personally called to ask if he’d accept the honour, which was kept under wraps until being announced publicly on Wednesday.
“It’s something that most lawyers work for, and especially for somebody from a city like Penticton, it doesn’t happen very often,” said Welsh.
He is indeed only the fourth local lawyer to make the grade. The last was Richard Thompson just last year, along with Dick Brooke and Mike Pearce, who are no longer practising.
Welsh — who confirmed with a laugh that he will not be raising his rates as a result of his new title — graduated in 1980 from law school at the University of B.C., after which he established his own practice on the Sunshine Coast.
In 1997, he moved his practice to the Okanagan, where he has been ever since.
Welsh argued a case before the Supreme Court of Canada in December 2016, while serving a one-year term as president of the B.C. Branch of the Canadian Bar Association. He’s currently serving as the Okanagan bencher for the Law Society of B.C.
Also a trained arbitrator and mediator, Welsh’s high-profile criminal clients include ex-city councillor Gary Leaman and Ronald Teneycke, whom the Crown is currently seeking to have locked up indefinitely as a dangerous offender.
Welsh and the 26 other new Q.C.’s were picked from 182 candidates nominated by their peers.
“Each appointee has earned this very special honour by demonstrating a superb record of achievement and commitment to our province’s legal system,” Attorney General Eby said in a press release.
“As professionals, volunteers and advocates, they have shown integrity and leadership in upholding the rule of law, serving their communities and striving to make British Columbia a safer and more equitable place to live.”
The first Queen’s Counsel designation was conferred in 1594 by Queen Elizabeth I, according to the press release.
At present, just 492 of the 11,533 lawyers currently practising in B.C. hold the designation.