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LAW TIMES COVERING ONTARIO'S LEGAL SCENE | APRIL 1, 2019 13 www.lawtimesnews.com "drastically limiting the num- ber of benchers" or moving to- ward an entirely appointment- based system. She says there are benefits to having a large number of candi- dates run, including allowing for a large number of opportunities for representation to occur. Although Anita Anand isn't running for election as a bencher, she has some thoughts on the size. As the J.R. Kimber chair in investor protection and corporate governance and the academic director of the centre for the legal profession and pro- gram on ethics in law and busi- ness at the University of Toron- to's faculty of law, Anand says Convocation is "an overly large decision-making body, and my view is that that structure should be re-examined in the context of re-examining self-regulation of the legal profession on a larger scale." Anand says people should be asking bigger questions than how many benchers should be elected. "The question is 'Does the examination of self-regulation begin at the law society? Or does it begin with the province of Ontario [with] the attorney general's office?' I think it would have to be a co-operative effort," she says. "We can't have a self- regulatory body making reform suggestions and adopting re- forms for itself alone. They are a product of legislation. And so the question is whether the leg- islative process needs to be part of this analysis." Not everyone running for bencher believes that the size of Convocation needs to be cut down or that there need to be changes to how benchers are chosen. John Callaghan, a part- ner at Gowling WLG, for ex- ample, says the current system works. "The governance of lawyers, at least in Canada, has always been recognized to be a very important aspect of our civil society, and the Supreme Court of Canada has said that. Exactly what they said, is 'The indepen- dence of the Bar from the state in all its pervasive manifesta- tions is one of the hallmarks of a free society. Consequently, regulation of these members of the law profession by the state must, so far as by human inge- nuity it can be so designed, be free from state interference, in the political sense,'" he says, cit- ing A.G. Can. v. Law Society of B.C., 1982. Callaghan says Convoca- tion can't really be viewed in the same way as a typical board of directors and needs to main- tain its size to ensure there is representation from across the province and the diversity nec- essary to represent all manner of people. Callaghan, who is running for his third term, says the abil- ity for all benchers to voice their opinions — be they voices of as- sent or dissent — is one of the things that makes Convocation different from a board of direc- tors. "Not all [Convocation] deci- sions are universally accepted. Those who preach the board ethos sometimes forget the fact that boards generally speak with one voice and that, while Convocation passes [motions] on a majority basis and then the law society takes its direction from Convocation, it doesn't mean that there aren't voices out there that might disagree with it. This is essentially a public en- tity where dissent is healthy," he says. "That's why it has a wide group of views, so that it's not just captive to a small group of like-minded people." Durcan says that while she has been "really impressed by the quality of discourse" she has heard as a bencher so far, she is concerned that the voices of the public members can be muted if there are too many lawyers at Convocation, especially if they act as advocates for the profes- sion and not protectors of the public good. Additionally, she is worried that those with specific expertise in the questions being addressed won't be heard. While Durcan says a board of around 20 might be a workable number, reducing the number of benchers isn't her only goal. Ideally, she says, the law society should consider eliminating elections and moving toward a system where benchers are se- lected by "a competency-based appointment process," where factors such as expertise and diversity would be taken into ac- count. Under this model, she pro- poses non-bencher lawyers would volunteer to take part in committees and working groups based on their interests and expertise, while the benchers — who wouldn't sit on the com- mittees — would make the final policy decisions. LT Anita Anand says people should be asking bigger questions than how many benchers should be elected. Candidates have different takes Continued from page 12 BENCHER ELECTION "The governance of lawyers, at least in Canada, has always been recognized to be a very important aspect of our civil society . . ." John Callaghan Untitled-2 1 2019-03-26 3:20 PM

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