Part One
In addition to the Law Society of Ontario’s Planning Licensee Checklist available on the Law Society’s website[i], below are some practical tips that I learned when attempting to craft my firm’s contingency plan as required by the Law Society of Ontario to ensure that it takes effect without issue and as intended:
1. When Building Your Plan Remember: Time is of the essence
One of the purposes of the contingency plan based on the report submitted by the Law Society Subcommittee to Convocation, was that if a lawyer died without a will or without a successor Law Society Trustee Services would be far too late to help that licensee’s clients. As a result, client matters fall between the cracks and clients would be prejudiced. Also, the Law Society Trustee Services would be operating with little or no information about the various files and obligations the licensee took on and would lead to bad situations. Thus, when formulating your plan, you want to protect your clients as much as possible. The only way to do this is to consider how quickly your Administrator can take the reigns if your plan needs to be sprung into action.