A new Law Society pilot project will provide lawyers and paralegals with a method to fast-track the disciplinary process — provided that they admit their wrongdoings, that is.
At last week’s Convocation, benchers approved a recommendation by the Law Society’s Professional Regulation Committee (PRC) to initialize a two-year trial run of the awkwardly named Pre-Proceeding Consent Resolution Conference, or just “Conference” for short. A wide range of investigations — including professionalism and fail-to-serve issues — could be streamed into this new process, which will save time for both the Law Society and the person being investigated.
But as the PRC recommendation [PDF] explains, not all cases will qualify for Conference:
Since the public interest is paramount in the Law Society’s regulatory processes, cases of a serious nature and that present a novel issue that should be fully tried at a hearing will not be appropriate for the process. Further, a case will not be appropriate for the process if there is a concern that sufficient facts cannot be included in the record of the hearing resulting from the Conference to satisfy the Law Society’s obligation to have a transparent and fair process.
A comprehensive series of steps are laid out in the PRC recommendation in order to ensure that only the most cut-and-dry cases make it through to Conference.
- First, the Law Society must be satisfied that the lawyer or paralegal in question is willing to admit wrongdoing and cooperate in the process, and that sufficient jurisprudence exists to arrive at an appropriate penalty without a full hearing.
- Once that’s accomplished, the parties will negotiate a consent proposal — a tentative agreement on admissions and penalty — which the lawyer or paralegal will have 30 days to approve (or reject).
- The proposal will then be presented to the Proceedings Authorization Committee to review and, if its members approve, will pass on to a three-person Conference panel. Once the panel is satisfied with the agreement, a Notice of Application will be issued, and the matter will move to a hearing.
- The three-member Conference panel will also act as the Hearing panel, which will make a determination on the consent proposal. The proposal will be filed and made public, and the Hearing panel will issue an Order.
Throughout the recommendation, the PRC adamantly stresses that this process is not meant to circumvent the transparency of the Law Society’s disciplinary process; it is merely a means to streamline the bureaucratic process. “From a public perspective,” reads a section of the recommendation, “there is no significant difference between the current process in which matters are resolved through an Agreed Statement of Fact (ASF), and the Conference process.”