Court shoots down challenge to B.C. legal profession regulatory overhaul

VANCOUVER — The B.C. Supreme Court has ruled the provincial government’s legislation to overhaul regulation of lawyers, notaries and other legal professions is not unconstitutional.

The government in 2024 passed a bill to create a new regulator with jurisdiction over lawyers, notaries and paralegals, eliminating the long-standing model of “self-governance and self-regulation” of lawyers.

The Law Society of B.C., the self-regulation body governing the legal profession in the province since 1874, and the Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia filed legal challenges, claiming the overhaul unconstitutionally undermines the independence of lawyers.

The Canadian Bar Association, an intervener in the case, claimed that eliminating self-regulation in favour of state control over lawyers granted “unnecessarily broad powers to government to directly regulate the practice of law.”