LEGAL REGULATORS MUST HOLD LAW FIRMS ACCOUNTABLE FOR HARASSMENT

BY JASON WARD

‘Law societies hold powers that reach law firms. Cases using them against a firm’s workplace: I found none‘

For an associate bullied by the lawyer who controls her work and references, reporting is not a neutral act. In a Law Society of British Columbia survey of 787 respondents, 78.7 percent had experienced discrimination, harassment, sexual harassment, or bullying.

Among those who reported an incident, 9.1 percent reported it to the LSBC. Ontario’s Discrimination and Harassment Counsel is confidential and cannot investigate or discipline; discipline sits with the regulator, whose firm powers remain unused. Canadian law societies punish harassers one at a time. Not one, in any reported decision, has held a law firm to account for the workplace that allowed the harassment to occur.

This begins with the gap in the rulebook. The Federation of Law Societies modernized its Model Code in October 2022, adding rules against harassment and reprisal that protect “a colleague, employee, client or any other person.” Every common-law jurisdiction in Canada has adopted that framework except one. Almost everywhere, a lawyer who bullies an associate now breaches a specific conduct rule, even absent a sexual advance or protected ground. Ontario, with the country’s largest bar, has adopted neither rule: its code names sexual harassment and discrimination, leaving bullying to general provisions written for other purposes.

There are also dormant powers. Nova Scotia’s Legal Profession Act lets a discipline panel find a firm guilty of professional misconduct and fine it up to $50,000. Manitoba’s regulator fines a firm found in contravention up to $100,000. Saskatchewan treats firms as members, subject to discipline. Ontario’s legislature wrote firms into the Law Society Act in 2020, including granting bylaw-making authority, four years after Convocation approved seeking that authority. I searched for a single published decision sanctioning a firm over its workplace, in any province. I found none. The statutes are in force; the published record of their use is empty.

The cost is clearest among women. Combing through court and tribunal records, the Toronto Star found 65 cases since 2000 alleging sexual misconduct by lawyers against colleagues. In 32 known outcomes, 23 complainants left their jobs. In the profession’s national health study, 72.2 percent of reported uncivil and violent acts were committed by colleagues, supervisors, or judges. Women are 49 percent of practising lawyers, the IBA reports, but represent only 35 percent of senior lawyers in private firms. Harassment is a health hazard and a driver of attrition, one that a regulator can reach.

England and Wales have gone further. Since April 2023, every solicitor must treat colleagues fairly, managers must challenge conduct that falls short, and firms carry the same duty as entities. The Bar Council named its first commissioner for conduct in January 2026. The barristers’ handbook now says serious bullying may amount to serious misconduct. In June, the solicitors’ regulator appealed a suspension imposed on a firm owner for bullying junior staff, arguing it was insufficiently severe.

I know the objection: other workplace law already covers this. Provincial health and safety law may require harassment policies, programs, and investigations; human rights codes reach discriminatory harassment; civil remedies may exist. But those regimes leave gaps where law firms live. Equity partnerships will rarely be employment relationships for human rights purposes, the Supreme Court held in McCormick. Ontario’s top court declined to recognize a free-standing tort of harassment. For an associate whose supervisor controls work, advancement, and references, litigation is hardly a frictionless remedy.

In its duty-to-report work last year, the Federation declined to propose making lawyers report harassment, citing Louise Arbour’s conclusion that the duty “has served only to terrorize and revictimize those it was meant to protect.” That logic points one way: the mandatory burden falls on firms and managers, not victims. It can be done: One BC lawyer’s return to practice is conditional on him or his firm maintaining an approved sexual harassment policy and engaging an external lawyer to investigate complaints against him. A reactive condition, once. Make prevention the rule.

The principle is simple. Write the bylaws: firms must maintain real anti-harassment systems, beyond mere policies framed and hanging in the lunchroom, and answer for systemic failures. Close the rule gap: adopt the Model Code’s harassment and reprisal rules in every jurisdiction, starting with the largest. Open the data: publish de-identified pattern reporting. The taxonomy does not separately identify harassment, so outsiders cannot see the pattern. The published discipline record is built around individuals. The firm around them barely appears. Regulate the room.

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