Difference between revisions of "Lawyers & The Law Society"

Both you and your lawyer have the right to have the lawyer's bills reviewed for fairness under the Legal Profession Act to fix a final amount owing. This assessment is called "taxing" a lawyer's bill. The assessment is performed by a Registrar or Master of the Supreme Court at a hearing called a "taxation hearing."

At this hearing, the Registrar will be presented with the lawyer's bills to you, and any other supporting documents, such as a time diary, a statement of the lawyer's charges to your bill by the amount of time spent on each task on a day-by-day basis, and the documents and correspondence that were generated during the litigation. Your lawyer will attempt to satisfy the Registrar that his or her fees were reasonable and that the amounts billed for disbursements were reasonable. The Registrar will look at the bills and apply a number of considerations in arriving at his or her decision, including:

After hearing all the evidence, the Registrar will issue a Certificate of Fees which sets out the amount of fees and disbursements which the Registrar has approved as reasonable. That becomes the amount you owe to your lawyer for his or her services, and, in some cases, the amount of the refund your lawyer owes you. Most importantly, the Certificate of Fees has the same standing as a court judgment and can be used as such to enforce the amount owing to the lawyer or the amount owed by the lawyer to you.