, the future first prime minister of Canada The Law Society of Upper Canada was established in 1797 to regulate the legal profession in the
British colony of
Upper Canada and is the oldest self-governing body in North America. The Society governed the legal profession in the coterminous
Canada West from 1841 to 1867, and in Ontario since
Confederation in 1867. The Law Society was authorized, although not created, by the
Act for the better regulating of the practice of the law, a 1797 statute. Section 1 of the act simply authorized those at the time "admitted in the law and practising at the bar" in the province to form themselves into a "society". The 1797 statute allowed the Law Society to impose requirements for admission to the bar of Upper Canada and to test applicants against these standards. That statute made no express provisions for any other people to become members of the Law Society: but the power to admit others than the existing practitioners was considered to be implied by section 5. Section 5 provided that "no person other than the present practitioners ... shall be permitted to practise at the bar of any of His Majesty's courts in this province, unless such person shall have been previously entered of and admitted into the said society as a student of the laws ... and shall have been duly called and admitted to the practice of the law as a barrister, according to the constitutions and establishment thereof". Incorporation of the Society occurred in 1822. On July 17, 1797, at Wilson's Hotel in Newark, Ontario (now
Niagara-on-the-Lake), a group of lawyers, including
John White,
Robert Isaac Dey Gray, and
Bartholomew Crannell Beardsley, inaugurated the Law Society pursuant to the 1797 act. The Law Society's first home was at Wilson's Hotel, then from 1799 to 1832 at various temporary locations at York (Toronto) until
Osgoode Hall was built in 1832. The Law Society continued to retain its original name, even though Upper Canada ceased to exist as a political entity in 1841. Throughout the early 1800s, the Law Society imposed increasingly onerous requirements on potential Upper Canadian lawyers, at one point requiring students-at-law to live at Osgoode Hall while they completed their legal studies. Historian Paul Romney argues such licensing requirements enhanced the legal profession's "prestige" in the young colony, as compared to its position in other North American colonies or the United States. The Law Society was reformed by statute in 1970, under the
Law Society Act, 1970. That statute defined the Society as "a corporation without share capital composed of the Treasurer, the benchers, and other members from time to time". Many of the reforms in the 1971 act were inspired by the
McRuer report, officially the Report of the Royal Commission Inquiry into Civil Rights (1968), a wide-ranging set of law reform recommendations for Ontario developed under the leadership of
James Chalmers McRuer. On October 27, 1994, the Law Society adopted a "role statement" holding that it "exists to govern the legal profession in the public interest" and has the "purpose of advancing the cause of justice". The Law Society faced calls to change the name
Upper Canada. Benchers voted to drop the name and replace it with a new one. On November 2, 2017, the Society's governing body (Convocation) chose "Law Society of Ontario" as the new name. The name change was made official on May 8, 2018, following amendments to the
Law Society Act as part of the 2018 provincial budget implementation bill. In 2017, the Law Society enacted a requirement that licensees acknowledge an "obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion", referred to as a "statement of principles". The requirement was phased in over several months in late 2017. Following a public campaign called "StopSOP", under which a number of benchers were elected who pledged to repeal the requirement, the requirement was repealed in September 2019. In the 2023 bencher election, the StopSOP slate, renamed to FullStop, was defeated by the Good Governance Coalition, which ran on a civility platform. In March 2025, the Law Society terminated the employment of CEO Diana Miles after receiving a report it commissioned from former associate chief justice of Ontario
Dennis O'Connor into her June 2024 salary increase. Her base salary of $595,000 with 20% annual bonuses had been increased to a flat salary of $936,800 without approval by benchers at Convocation by former treasurer
Jacqueline Horvat. In July 2024, Horvat left her position after being appointed to the
Ontario Superior Court of Justice and new treasurer Peter Wardle notified Convocation in November of the amended contract against Miles's wishes, which led to O'Connor being hired to investigate. While the report did not have a mandate to assign blame, O'Connor concluded Miles ought to have known that the raise required Convocation approval, that Horvat did not have unilateral authority to amend the contract, and that Horvat was aware of prior contentious Convocation disputes over Miles's salary and bonuses. The reason for Miles's departure was not immediately revealed but after leaks to outlets such as
The Globe and Mail and public pressure from lawyers, including some benchers, O'Connor's report was publicly released. == Oversight ==