LAWYER COMPLAINTS: Lawyers need to be accountable but Law Societies are best at “protecting the lawyers from the public, but not the public from the lawyers”. The Bad news is getting a lawyer disciplined is hard. The Toronto Star reported last year on that. The Good news is if your complaint is accepted for investigation, the lawyer has to prepare and file an Answer and do the work needed. Often this’ll be the first time many bad lawyers do anything at all!
Unfortunately, a quick email or an angry letter to the Law Society is not an effective complaint and will be dismissed – with a form letter! Once a defective compliant is filed and rejected, you can’t redo it and file again. You only get “one kick at the can”.
Law Societies, like other boards and regulatory bodies are “Tribunals” and follow the rules of court as a proceeding, so these can be drawn out affairs. Yup, there’s no short cuts. Been there done that. Decisions of Tribunals are listed on Canlii.org.
There’s a belief that if enough people file complaints on one lawyer, a Law Society will do something. This is not true. They only act when a credible and fully backed complaint is in their hands.
Lawyers do get disciplined and specific footnote numbers next to lawyer names in the “Good and Bad Lawyers List” show it’s possible. When a serious complaint reaches the “hearing” stage, bad lawyers hire other lawyers to defend them! This means bad lawyers spend big bucks for being bad, which is good!
Complaint mistakes are many, but here’s a few:
- failing to tie the complaint to specific violations of the “Rules of Professional Conduct”
- no evidence to support the complaint
- no transcripts when a transcript is needed
- poorly written complaint, incoherent, large run-on sentences, no numbered paragraphs
- complaint overreaches rules
- inadmissible evidence
- claims amounting to lawyer negligence, Law Societies refuse negligence complaints
- rules of the original proceeding broken by the lawyer not mentioned / proven.
- Case Law decisions of the Law Society or from the courts not used
- exhibits of laws and rules broken not supplied by complainant
If your complaint is a negligence issue then you must sue, but if you lose you will be forced to pay a bad lawyers legal costs, it’s true, so extreme care is needed. With effort you should be able to find a Rule the lawyer broke so that the complaint is within the realm of the Law Society.
The Law Society automatically dismisses complaints with a form letter, their plan is to stump the public and avoid doing anything. Page 5 para 39 to 44 describes a method to compel the Law Society staffer into investigating the complaint and forcing the bad lawyer to file an Answer. On well prepared complaints this has helped to get a complaint into the “investigation” phase.
A good lawyer complaint has to be a complete, fully supported document with all the materials to make a decision, however it is not a “file dump” with reams of paper where you expect the Law Society to “figure it out” – because they won’t!!
And yes, it’s a lot of work, but along the way you’ll learn what our government doesn’t want the public to know – how the law works and doesn’t work, case law and how to use it and how to get things done!
The law touches everyone’s life, most us will visit family courts for divorces, wills, property law, etc, yet our public education system totally avoids it!
The PDF at the link below is based on the experiences of many parent’s complaints since 2006.
Links to attachment(s): .pdf
brainsyntax/How-To-Complain-Effectively-About-a-Lawyer-Jun-016-Rev_3.pdf
