Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario's Lawyers, 1797-1997

In July 1797, ten of the fifteen lawyers in Upper Canada gathered at Wilson's Hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake to establish the Law Society of Upper Canada. Half of them were under thirty; the youngest was nineteen. The organization they were founding, a professional organization with statutory authority to control its membership and govern its own affairs, had no parallel anywhere else in the common-law world. Christopher Moore, in this history marking the society's bicentenary, begins by examining the unprecedented step taken by those barely qualified lawyers in 1797. He describes the evolution of the Law Society and the legal profession from the days of barristers ranging the backwoods on horseback, through the reforms of the late nineteenth century, the period of reaction between the two world wars, and the tremendous postwar growth in the legal profession, to the long struggle for women and minorities to gain acceptance as lawyers. Taking readers behind the wrought-iron fence and stately lawns of the society's home at Osgoode Hall in Toronto, Moore brings the story right down to the present, describing how, in the 199Os, questions of governance, the problem of legal aid, and the cost of practice insurance triggered a series of crises that have rocked the Law Society to its foundations.