Lawyer Brook Greenberg, KC, of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP has taken on the role of president of the Law Society of B.C. in 2025. The society is the independent regulator of lawyers, tasked to craft and enforce regulations.
But over the past five years the society has faced many headwinds, including anti-money laundering scrutiny, mental health considerations, access to justice, Indigenous reconciliation, threats to the rule of law in democracies and a legal battle with the provincial government over a revised Legal Professions Act that will soon dissolve the society in its current form in favour of a new legal regulator.
BIV recently posed questions to Greenberg on these issues. His responses are edited for brevity.
BIV: The society opposes the proposed Legal Professions Act on constitutional grounds. What is a reasonable solution for ensuring it maintains lawyers’ independence from government?
Greenberg: The current structure of the Act provides for independent, elected lawyers as a majority of the board to ensure that both the regulator and the profession are independent. The new act, Bill 21, does not have those safeguards.
Having a number of directors who are appointed, and not necessarily having to be lawyers, leaves open the potential for the kinds of assaults on independence of the legal profession that we're seeing in the United States.
And the executive director, who would be appointed by a board that we don't consider sufficiently safeguards independence, has enormous unilateral powers.
The society is concerned Bill 21 provides for a startup committee of non-lawyers to establish the new regulator’s framework, in conjunction with Indigenous group consultation. Would the society accept the startup committee if the appointed Indigenous members were lawyers?
I can't really speculate about what we would do if the if the structure were different. What I can tell you is truth and reconciliation is a priority for us.
The society’s mandatory Indigenous coursework language pertaining to the ground penetrating radar work on the Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds has led to debate in the legislature and a lawsuit against the society. Does it intend to change the language?
We had always planned on reviewing and revising course material.
I don't think, personally, just speaking for myself, there is a need, necessarily, to change the language because it's accurate, and we've set that out in our response to the civil claim.
What are the issues of today that may erode trust in the legal profession?
I don't know that there has been an erosion of trust in the legal system or judges or lawyers, beyond the erosion of trust in institutions in society generally.
[On media]:
If people don't trust what they read in more traditional media sources where the coverage of things like court decisions is conducted according to journalistic standards … they're more likely to believe things that are said that may not necessarily reflect accurately on what's going on in the justice system.
What’s going on with the legal system in the U.S. truly is shocking … with Donald Trump issuing executive orders, calling lawyers and particular law firms dishonest and really trying to intimidate law firms and their clients who would bring challenges to his actions.
I think this brings home how important it is to have independent counsel.
Do you think the society is capturing most of the misconduct in its investigations and citations?
I think part of that is the robustness of our processes, which includes the ability, which we enforce, to audit lawyers’ trust accounts on a regular basis … at least every four years, but in areas of practice that are higher risk, more frequently than that.
The vast majority of lawyer-conduct issues arise out of inadvertence, and we catch a lot of that through the compliance audits.
There exist recent cases of trust account misappropriation/theft and AML [anti-money laundering] violations by lawyers in citations but no related criminal prosecutions. Is the law society handing over files to the RCMP when it deems necessary?
We do when it's appropriate. We're not in charge of criminal prosecution. You know, I don't think it's surprising to hear that financial crimes do not get the attention that some people believe they deserve. That's separate and apart from what we do as a regulator.
What did you make of Fintrac’s October 2024 report highlighting how about 2,400 suspicious transaction reports were submitted to Fintrac by reporting entities referencing transactions involving legal professions, professionals and or law firms?
I mean, it was not very well particularized and pretty general. But what I make of that is we have a complaints process that if other regulators are aware of any information, they should provide it to us, we will investigate and we will discipline those if they've misconducted themselves.
We have enforced, on numerous occasions, those who have not complied stringently with their money laundering prevention obligations.
To beat a bit of a dead horse, why can't law societies do the same as in the U.K. and report suspicious transactions to government?
We have a different constitutional standard … as the Cullen Commission concluded, the fact that law societies are the regulator of lawyers, including with respect to money laundering prevention, does not mean it's a lesser form of money laundering prevention.
In Canada, solicitor-client privilege has been held to be akin to a constitutional principle. And the reason why is you cannot fully inform your lawyer about whatever issues you want to talk about if you're concerned that they may have to turn around and give some kind of information to a government entity.
As chair of the Federation of Canadian Law Societies standing committee on mental health could you elaborate on why lawyers are being hit with mental health and substance use issues?
There are lots of things that people can point to … including that it's a tough job. We have to represent clients who, for some of them, are having their worst experience of their lives. There's a lot of people with compassion fatigue. As an adversarial process, law puts a lot of pressure on lawyers … and a lot of lawyers have perfectionistic tendencies. So a big part of what we've been doing at the law society is trying to remove stigma and shame from our regulatory processes.
There's a lot of discussion around mental health problems among bar members, as well as rising costs to become and practice as a lawyer. Has becoming a lawyer lost its lustre?
Well, it hasn't. For me. I love being a lawyer. I'm surrounded by colleagues who really consider this to be a noble profession and stand up for principles like independence of the bar, independence of the judiciary
“There are problems in terms of people being able to afford access to justice, and we are doing what we can as a regulator to try to facilitate and expand access to justice. But at the end of the day, that access crisis really rests with the provincial government, who is the funder.
