BCCA sent case back for another hearing set for March, lawyer says he spent $300K in legal fees
In 2021, the Law Society of British Columbia issued the first of two citations against Vancouver lawyer Bijan Ahmadian. In the years since, litigation between Ahmadian and the legal regulator has yielded conflicting tribunal and appellate court decisions, set to culminate in another hearing starting in late March.
It’s a process that has cost Ahmadian significant stress and approximately $300,000 in legal fees. However, the lawyer firmly believes his case sets an important precedent for the legal community and beyond.
An appellate court decision that said Ahmadian’s mental health must be considered when assessing his conduct has implications that “are not just for lawyers,” he says. “It actually has broader implications for every profession that appears in front of a regulatory body.”
Ahmadian’s dispute with the LSBC began in 2019 when the legal regulator conducted a compliance audit of the lawyer’s firm. In 2021 and 2022, the LSBC issued citations against Ahmadian, alleging he misappropriated funds, failed to report and eliminate trust shortages, borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients, and engaged in other misconduct.
In 2023, regarding his first citation, an LSBC hearing panel noted that Ahmadian repaid the loans and that his citation did not arise from a client complaint, but agreed with most of the allegations. The panel concluded that Ahmadian’s conduct represented, in several instances, “a marked departure from the behaviour that is expected from lawyers.”
However, the Court of Appeal of British Columbia disagreed. In a decision later that same year, the court set aside the hearing panel’s findings of professional misconduct, dismissed one allegation and remitted the remaining allegations back to the hearing panel for reconsideration. The court also concluded that Ahmadian’s conduct did not constitute misappropriation.
Among other reasons for its decision, the appellate court pointed to how the hearing panel handled evidence of Ahmadian’s mental health. At the LSBC hearing, Ahmadian presented documents by two doctors, which backed his claims that he had been diagnosed with depressive and anxiety disorders. Ahmadian argued that the conditions impaired his decision-making and cognitive functions and were “contributing causes” to his conduct.
The hearing panel found the doctors’ evidence irrelevant to their analysis, but the BCCA called this decision “problematic.”
The court noted that since 2008, the LSBC’s discipline decisions have “widely adopted” an analytical framework for assessing professional misconduct allegations. This framework involves weighing the alleged misconduct against so-called Lyons factors, which include the gravity of the alleged misconduct, the harm caused, the presence or absence of mala fides, and more.
The BCCA sided with Ahmadian’s argument that mental illness has a bearing on whether he acted with mala fides or bad faith. The court said that the hearing panel’s failure to recognize the doctors’ qualifications to diagnose and treat mental illness – along with its failure to consider their evidence about Ahmadian’s health – undermined its conclusion that the lawyer engaged in misconduct.
Following the BC Court of Appeal’s decision, the remaining allegations from the first citation were combined with the second citation. A hearing for the case will take place from March 31 to April 11.
Ahmadian says the process has been gruelling, compounding his pre-existing anxiety. Much of his distress stemmed from the length of the proceedings. He noted that the LSBC took three years to issue its second citation after launching its compliance audit; for about a year between 2020 and 2021, he didn’t hear anything about the investigation that resulted in the second citation.
“A year of waiting and not knowing – it’s a really long time,” Ahmadian says. “That uncertainty is very challenging.” He says he regularly fields calls from lawyers with similar experiences, looking to commiserate about the disciplinary process's toll on them. “The process is taxing on those lawyers,” he says. “You have everything at stake that you might lose, and when the law society causes delays, when the expenses [add up], it magnifies the effect… on people's mental health.”
Money has also been a source of stress. In 2023, Ahmadian filed a commercial proposal to manage the expenses he’s incurred since the LSBC began investigating his law practice. Ahmadian, who continues to run his legal practice, says he and his wife recently sold their apartment to cut down on expenses. In January, a GoFundMe was launched to help with his legal costs.
He notes that his upcoming hearing spans 10 days, which will add substantially to his legal costs.
But Ahmadian says he’s proud of the case and its potential impact on other lawyers who are struggling with mental health issues. He pointed to a 2024 disciplinary decision by a Law Society of Alberta panel that stated, “The mental health of a member has been recognized as an important determinant of a member’s ability to practice law and is relevant in misconduct inquiry.” The decision cited the BCCA’s ruling in Ahmadian’s case.
The BCCA decision has left “a legacy that we can be proud of,” Ahmadian says. “I really want to now take the next step – go to a hearing and take the opportunity to have a panel apply the decision so that we can conclude this journey in a way that hopefully will set a lasting precedent for generations of lawyers to come.”
A spokesperson for the LSBC said they could not comment on any upcoming LSBC Tribunal hearings.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect that Ahmadian filed a commercial proposal, and not a consumer proposal, in 2023. It has also been updated with additional details about the case and to clarify that the BC Court of Appeal did not remit both citations back to the hearing panel.
