Professional Regulation Division 2024 End-of-Year Report available

Press Release

April 24, 2025

The Law Society of Ontario’s Professional Regulation division’s 2024 End-of-Year Report is now publicly available.

The Law Society of Ontario’s mandate is to protect the public interest, maintain public confidence in the legal professions by ensuring the competence and professional conduct of our lawyer and paralegal licensees as well as our licensing candidates.

The Law Society takes a data informed approach to reduce the risk of harm that providers of legal services may pose to the public. Each year the Law Society spends its regulatory resources on a small portion of licensees – several of whom receive multiple complaints. Almost 6,500 complaints were received in 2024. However, these complaints involved only 4% of lawyers and 3.8% of paralegals — and, only a small fraction of those required any formal regulatory action.

The Law Society continued to exceed National Discipline Standards for investigations resolving or referring 91% of complaints for disciplinary or remedial response within 12 months and 94% within 18 months. The standards are 80% and 90% respectively.

Most complaints are low-risk and are resolved early without proceeding to a formal investigation. For those deemed high-risk, the Law Society moves quickly to prevent further harm.

Last year, the Law Society increasingly used interlocutory suspensions — the suspension of a licence based on the reasonable grounds for believing there is significant risk of harm — in response to a surge in apparent serious misconduct, in particular, financial misconduct. Additionally, the use of summary hearings, which can be commenced quickly, were increasingly used to incentivize licensees to cooperate and respond or risk suspension. The Law Society is constrained by the limited investigative powers provided by the Law Society Act. Without a licensee’s cooperation, the Law Society cannot access many of the financial records that are central to a meaningful assessment of risk.

In 2025, the Law Society intends to pursue enhanced powers to access trust account records from financial institutions so that trust account activity can be more quickly assessed and appropriate action can be taken quickly to protect the public. As part of the Law Society’s commitment to transparency, licensees, stakeholders and the public will be informed regarding progress on this matter.

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