B.C.’s new Legal Profession Act received royal assent and became law last month despite strong opposition from the province’s law society and bar association.
The legislation establishes a single regulatory body for lawyers, paralegals and notaries, and a new category of regulated paralegals who can handle certain legal cases on their own. The scope of notaries public will also be broadened to include more day-to-day legal matters.
“This is a terrible piece of legislation in my opinion. It essentially takes the independence of lawyers away from them in the self-governing nature of lawyers… It wraps up the Law Society of BC, it creates a new government-run regulatory body to deal with all legal professionals in BC and it creates a board that will have initial people appointed to it by government, by the existing Law Society and by the First Nation’s Justice Council who will then come up with the rules that will govern lawyers in BC…”
