Re-calibrating, re-visioning and re-thinking self-regulation in Canada

Several jurisdictions, most notably Australia and the United Kingdom, have recently abandoned a regime of self-regulation of the legal profession. In this paper the authors review recent developments in Canada to argue that there has been a significant increase in the regulatory vigour of law societies and suggest that, at least in part, this is driven by the fear of losing self-regulation. In the latter part of the paper the authors then attempt to assess whether defensive self-regulation is working and propose an evaluative scheme and series of metrics by which to assess effectiveness and efficiency of a regulatory regime. They conclude by suggesting an innovative institutional mechanism that would have the legitimacy and capability to perform such an assessment.