Benchers approved the fees, which total $345 over two years, last week
British Columbia lawyers will have to pay two levies totalling $345 to the Law Society of BC to support transitional measures under the Legal Professions Act, the divisive legislation that looks to overhaul how legal professionals are regulated in the province and that the LSBC is currently challenging in court.
The levies, which were approved by the majority of the LSBC’s benchers at a meeting on Friday, will be collected this upcoming November and in November 2027. Lawyers will be required to pay $210 to the regulator this year and $135 next year.
The BC legislature passed the Legal Professions Act in 2024 to bring lawyers, paralegals, and notaries – who have long been regulated by separate regulatory bodies – under a single regulator. The law established a transitional board to help implement the new regulator, consisting of members appointed by the LSBC, the Society of Notaries Public, the BC Paralegal Association, and the Lieutenant Governor in Council.
On Monday, LSBC president Thomas Spraggs told Canadian Lawyer that the levies will go towards transition costs like Indigenous counsel, consulting, staffing, advisory fees, travel, and expenses related to holding monthly meetings.
The law society spent approximately $1.36 million on the transition by the end of 2025, and expects those costs to total $5.4 million by the end of 2027.
Spraggs clarifies that the levies will not be used to support the law society’s ongoing litigation against the provincial government. The LSBC is scheduled to continue its challenge of the Legal Professions Act before the BC Court of Appeal in November; in April, a lower court upheld the legislation’s constitutionality after the LSBC and the Trial Lawyers Association of BC sued to stop the law from going into effect.
Even though the provincial government wrote and passed the law, “we receive no government funding to help with the work required to transition to the new entity,” Spraggs says. He argues that any decision to impose additional levies on BC’s lawyers, most of whom paid more than $2,500 in annual membership fees to the LSBC last year, “is taken very seriously by the law society.
“We carefully consider all decisions that impact lawyers' fees and work to ensure the financial impacts are as minimal to the profession as possible,” Spraggs says. “I hope in this situation, in the overall context of all the moving pieces and complexities, that it is a decision that will stand the test of time as being the right decision. I think it will be.”
But Jamie Maclaren, who served as an elected LSBC bencher between 2013 and 2021, argued the law society’s decision to impose levies on BC lawyers is steeped in hypocrisy. Maclaren is currently executive director of the Access Pro Bono Society of BC, but says his opinions are his own and that he is not speaking on behalf of the nonprofit organization.
The former bencher referenced the LSBC’s core argument against the Legal Professions Act, which it brought to court last fall: that the new legal regulator established by the law will give BC lawyers less power to determine who among their peers will serve on its governing board.
“The law society talks a lot about the importance of democratic self-governance,” Maclaren says. “Why is it then springing a $345 tax on unsuspecting lawyers with no notice or consultation?
“Shouldn’t it hold a referendum on the question of applying special levies to members instead of drawing from its ample reserve per its previous practice?” Maclaren asks. “Or on the question of spending member money to pursue a very expensive constitutional claim against [the] government – despite its long odds of success?”
In a fees and budget report that the LSBC’s finance and audit committee presented to benchers alongside its resolution to impose the transitional levies, the committee explained that the LSBC is funding the Legal Professions Act transition from its net asset reserves – money left over and accumulated over the years. These reserves have also been used to fund other one-time projects, like a pilot practice fee rebate program and professional development programs.
However, the committee argued that the transition costs could leave the reserve levels dangerously low. Without increasing LSBC members’ fees or imposing a special levy, the law society’s reserves “could be drawn down to nil in a few years, leaving no financial cushion to fund future one-time projects and provide stability in case of emergencies,” the committee said.
The levies would replenish reserves so that the LSBC can continue to cover 2.9 months’ worth of operating expenses by the end of 2027. The committee noted that the LSBC follows recommendations for nonprofit organizations, which state that they should hold between three and six months of reserves to provide stability to cover unexpected costs or one-time projects.
Maclaren says he agrees with the importance of maintaining a healthy reserve fund. However, he argues that the LSBC has reported budget surpluses for years. “It never gave members a rebate from those surpluses,” he says. “It just added them to its reserve. Why is it now taxing members – without notice or consultation – to compensate for one or two years of modest deficit? “
He also accused the LSBC of using the levies to make a political point against the provincial government, approving them days after BC NDP leader David Eby called an early provincial election.
But Spraggs dismissed this accusation, arguing that the law society had been weighing its funding options before the election was called.
“I understand that people might have that cynical view, but this is done with the intention of trying to achieve the goal of making sure that we have three to six months of operating costs and net reserves,” he says.
He also notes that the LSBC has worked hard to keep members’ annual fees from rising in recent years despite inflation. The law society’s last fee increase occurred in 2025 – the first in over six years. Spraggs also says that lawyers who need financial support can turn to the LSBC’s one-time practice fee rebate pilot program.
“While we could have increased the practice fee to cover these transition costs, we chose instead to cover these costs by way of a special assessment in order to support greater transparency and retain the practice fee for ongoing operations,” Spraggs says.
