HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR LAW SOCIETY,Contacts, Tips, Effective Complaining, Web and E-mail links to Law Societies and their Secretaries / Executive Directors Index to the Law Societies of Canada on CanLaw
WARNING: LAW SOCIETY REFERRALS ARE NOT WHAT YOU EXPECT:
Law Society referrals are based on a bored telephone clerk asking you where you want a lawyer. She then looks at her list and takes the name of the next lawyer whose turn has come up.
There is no checking of skills, suitability or experience. Lawyers using law societies referrals pay a fee and when it is their turn they get the referral. The system stinks.
CanLaw is proudly independent and NOT AFFILIATED IN ANY WAY WITH ANY LAW SOCIETY ANYWHERE.
We are NOT lawyers. We caution all consumers to be very careful in dealing with any Law Society since they represent lawyers only. They do not represent you the client.
Law Societies in Canada are unions for lawyers. They exist not for the protection of consumers from lawyers, but for the protection of lawyers from consumers.
They will act only in the most extreme cases against incompetent, or dishonest lawyers and only when pushed to the extreme.
They will seldom do anything to help consumers with legitimate grievances, so beware.
If they acted against rude, arrogant, and obnoxious lawyers, they would never be able to rest.
The Law Society of Upper Canada requires lawyers pay the interest on your money in their trust funds to the Law Society. This amounts to theft of nearly 3,000,000.00 a year from you the clients.
Do you have a complaint about your lawyer's bill?
Please 
consult our page on dealing with lawyer's bills.
There is a separate court procedure, known as an assessment, (formerly called taxing) to deal with these complaints. It is not done by the Law Society.
Assessment of lawyer's bills is done through the Court, not your local Law Society. Please look in the government section of the telephone book under Courts for the telephone number of the office near you.
The Law Society of Upper Canada averages about 5000 consumer complaints against lawyers each year. They dismiss about 4900 of these and act only on about 100. What does that tell you?
