What is My Lawyer Spending My Money On?

Jumping Off the Ivory Tower with Prof JulieMac

Today’s episode features the story of a family self-represented litigant, who was originally represented by two different lawyers. She spent $20,000 on her first lawyer – resolving an uncontentious custody issue – but made no progress toward child support or division of assets. The second lawyer cost her another $25,000 – and still didn’t resolve child support, division of assets, or divorce. Her best efforts to obtain any information about what her money had been spent on, or to hold her lawyers to account via their professional regulator (the Law Society of Ontario) led… nowhere. Jana Saracevic and Nancy Cameron Q.C. comment. Among other things, this story illustrates the shortcomings of the Law Society of Ontario’s Compensation Fund, which offers no protection for many forms of negligence, only dishonesty, which is narrowly defined. There are no public reports describing how many claims are received and how many are met. In Other News: Guest Other News Correspondent Jordan Furlong focuses today on breaking news from the Law Society of Ontario: The Law Society’s Technology Task Force has released a report calling for the establishment of a Regulatory Sandbox for Innovative Technological Legal Services. (A Regulatory Sandbox is essentially a safe space for innovation, to try out new types of services that are prohibited by current regulations but look like they could be beneficial to the public.) The report includes a motion to be brought before Convocation later this month for approval of the Sandbox for a five-year pilot-program period. For related links and more on this episode visit our website: https://representingyourselfcanada.com/what-is-my-lawyer-spending-my-money-on/ Jumping Off the Ivory Tower is produced and hosted by Julie Macfarlane and Dayna Cornwall; production and editing by Brauntë Petric; Other News produced and hosted by Jordan Furlong; promotion by Moya McAlister and the NSRLP team.