Quite simply….because you can!
The Law Society of Upper Canada now licenses paralegals in Ontario. This ensures that they have a minimum requirement of education and they carry errors and omissions insurance.
We are also mandated to abide by the Code of Conduct governed by the Law Society.
This is all the same as a lawyer? Right? Almost. Lawyers have to carry the same insurance and abide by the same Rules but their scope of practice is a lot larger.
Paralegals are permitted to give advice and represent clients in any tribunal and the Small Claims Court as well as Provincial Offences, also known as traffic court. Paralegals have been around for a long time, for example X-Copper, or POINTTS, are paralegals that only deal with traffic tickets.
As you can see our scope of practice is a lot narrower than a lawyer.
Is that a bad thing? NO!
It is a good thing! Why?? Well, because we become extremely good at what we do. We practice in Small Claims Court and the Landlord and Tenant Board. We know the Rules for each platform extremely well and since we only practice in these platforms our experience is concentrated to them.
We are in no way saying lawyers aren’t good at Small Claims or Landlord and Tenant matter, they can be brilliant! but quite honestly, you really don’t see lawyers in the Boards and rarely see them in Small Claims Court.
The best part for our clients, since we don’t have the hefty burden of Law School tuition and years of being in school and not working, is our rates are substantially lower than lawyers.
