Difference between revisions of "Lawyers & The Law Society"

===Reviewing your lawyer's bill===

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 over the course of the lawyer's services to you. 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:

You will, of course, have the opportunity to present your side of the case and dispute your lawyer's bill as you see fit.

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.

The portion of a lawyer's bill attributable to obtaining or enforcing an order for child support or spousal support is tax deductible. The cost of defending a claim for spousal support or child support is not deductible.

If you don't ask your lawyer about this at the beginning of his or her retainer, it may be impossible to winnow out the parts of the lawyer's bills that were dedicated to support issues, and the cost of the time your lawyer spends reviewing your file and his or her bills to figure this out may cost more than the deduction you will get.

The Law Society exists to govern the legal profession for the benefit of the public. It is not the lawyer's friend or ally. You have the right to bring a complaint to the Law Society about a lawyers' actions or lack of action. You can contact the Law Society at:

There is no charge to speak to one of the Law Society's complaints officers and you do not need to hire a lawyer to make a complaint or begin the complaints process.

You or your lawyer can end your working relationship; you can fire your lawyer and your lawyer can fire you. From a lawyer's point of view, neither event occurs particularly often, but it does happen.

Clients usually want to fire their lawyers when they're unhappy with the service they're receiving. You can fire your lawyer simply by sending him or her a letter to that effect or giving your lawyer a call, though you will no doubt want to phrase a bit more nicely than "I'm firing you." The lawyer-client relationship is a business relationship, and you can terminate this relationship any time you wish.

Then there's the matter of your file. If your case is still on-going, you'll need to get your file. If you've hired another lawyer, your lawyer will normally just send it to your new counsel; if you haven't, you're entitled to ask that your lawyer send it straight to you. Of course, there may be a slight problem if you still owe money to your lawyer. If you still owe money, your lawyer is entitled to keep your file until his or her account is paid in full. In the right circumstances, your lawyer may agree to transfer your file to your new lawyer on the new lawyer's promise to make sure that the bill gets paid when the file concludes.

This really doesn't happen all that frequently. Most often, a lawyer will fire his or her client for one of the following reasons:

If your lawyer fires you, he or she will normally do so in a letter detailing the reason why he or she can no longer act for you and highlighting any important dates that are upcoming in your case. Most lawyers will also recommend other lawyers you may wish to consider retaining in their place.

==Further Reading in this Chapter==

* <span style="color: red;">bulleted list of other pages in this chapter, linked</span>

==Page Resources and Links==

===Legislation===

===Links===

{{JP Boyd on Family Law Navbox|type=chapters}}