The Legal Services Task Team, a team of 11 members from the legal community designed to review who can and who can’t practice law in the province, released their final report last week. In the report are various recommendations including allowing non-lawyers to provide basic legal services; providing greater clarification about what legal services are regulated; and creating guidelines that will help educate and inform the public about legal services. Gerald Tegart, former Deputy Minister of Justice, was a member of the task team. He says he can’t see allowing non-lawyers to perform minimum legal services would open the door for more job opportunities to make up for the legal aid staff who were given layoff notices at the Saskatoon office last month.
He adds that the services would likely be cheaper and points out lawyers have more years of schooling behind them and tend to charge more for their services. Don Morgan, Minister of Justice says he looks forward to reviewing the recommendations from the report, and to working with the Law Society on any changes that may happen as a result of the report.