B.C. law society priorities for 2025 ‘haven’t changed that much’ from last year: president

Law360 Canada (February 10, 2025, 4:35 PM EST) -- The Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) has held its first meeting of 2025, welcoming not only a new president but also a new CEO.

Brook Greenberg was officially sworn in by B.C. Chief Justice Leonard Marchand at the LSBC’s Feb. 7 bencher meeting. Greenberg, who served as the law society’s first vice-president last year, is a partner in the litigation and dispute resolution department at Fasken in Vancouver.

Greenberg said people seemed to expect he would use his first report to provide an idea of what the priorities for the year might be — but added they haven’t changed that much from last year, with a focus on access to justice, reconciliation, and dealing with the Legal Professions Act, which had been the subject of both controversy and litigation.

“We can’t allow the fact that we as a regulator accept our role in seeking to improve access to justice to be an excuse for the provincial government to shirk or shift its primary responsibility for funding the justice system,” he said. “The access to justice crisis is first and foremost a failure of the provincial government.”

Greenberg said the province could — as the LSBC has requested for some time — give the regulator the power to license other legal service providers, including those who participated in the law society’s innovation sandbox.

“Other professions are not asked to solve the access problems on their own — when there was a shortage of family doctors, the provincial government changed their funding model. When there was a lack of access to dental care, a program was created to provide help,” he said. “No one looked to doctors or dentists to single-handedly on their own address access issues, so it’s completely fair to challenge us as a regulator to do more.”

The meeting was also the first for newly-minted law society CEO and executive director Gigi Chen-Kuo, who replaced longtime chief executive Don Avison in January. She said she was “delighted to be introduced as the new Don” and eager to build on the law society’s foundation of excellence.

“It's a great privilege to be joining an organization that serves the public interest in such an important way, which is something that is very near and dear to my own heart,” she said.

The meeting also saw benchers consider a report from the LSBC’s trust review task force, with a decision to come at its next meeting. The task force, which was created in response to the Cullen Commission on money laundering, is recommending that law society rules make it explicit that any cash received under professional fee exceptions must be commensurate with the amount required for a retainer or for reasonably anticipated fees. It also says the LSBC should clarify what a lawyer must do when obtaining and recording information about “source of money,” and the law society should implement a one-time mandatory anti–money laundering training for all lawyers.

Chen-Kuo also noted a tentative agreement was reached between the LSBC and the Professional Employees Association (PEA), which represents staff lawyers, paralegals, a legal editor and some officer employees at the law society. If ratified, the tentative agreement will be retroactive to January 1, 2025.

The next LSBC bencher meeting is scheduled for April 11.

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