Ontario’s legal regulator is proposing significant changes to the fees lawyers take when they refer clients and to the way legal services are marketed to the public. A Law Society of Upper Canada committee released a report Tuesday recommending referral fees — money paid when one lawyer refers a client to another lawyer — either be banned outright or capped. The report, by the Advertising & Fee Arrangements Issues Working Group, also proposes curbing or banning the use of paid-for, often misleading awards; and prohibiting practitioners from marketing services they don’t intend to provide — a practice critics say would put an end to so called brokerage houses that draw in clients with flashy ads only to refer them out for a fee to lawyers at different firms, often without the client’s consent.“(Lawyers) should not be advertising a service that they are not intending to perform,” the report states.Malcolm Mercer, the chair of the law society working group, said “the principal concern about referral fees was about the effect on injured people.”“There appears to be a substantial lack of transparency when injured people are looking for a lawyer. It is not clear to them that referral fees are earned in that process.” These referral fees, paid by the lawyer who will ultimately handle the case, can range as high as 30 per cent of the overall fee according to the committee and its members have concerns that those payments limit the lawyer’s ability to properly represent the client.The working group’s proposals, which will be voted on during the law society’s convocation meeting Thursday, come on the heels of a Star investigation into the referral fee and marketing practices of Ontario’s personal injury lawyers.In one story, the Star looked at law firm Diamond & DiamondDiamond & Diamond and found that for many years it has been attracting thousands o ...
|
