David Wiseman

Access to justice and legal profession regulation in Canada: to ABS, to not ABS or to ABS+?

It appears that 2015 will be the year in which regulators of the legal profession in common law Canada decide whether to allow so-called alternative business structures (ABS) in the Canadian legal services sector. Briefly put, allowing ABS involves approving non-lawyer ownership of entities providing legal services and is done with the intention of enabling significantly greater application of ‘corporate’ investment and expertise in the private market for legal services. ABS was authorised in Australia in 2000 and in England and Wales in 2011. It is not yet allowed in the United States, but a debate appears to be reopening there. A noteworthy aspect of the Canadian debate on ABS is the emphasis being given to the potential for liberalised business structures to improve access to justice through innovations in legal services processes and ‘products’. In this report I provide a brief overview of the consideration of ABS in Canada. I then offer some observations on why the potential gains in access to justice from allowing ABS are unlikely to reach people living on low income and, in turn, sketch an argument for a need to explore the possibility of designing an ‘ABS+’ model.