Thus far, I have stayed out of the controversy surrounding the Statement of Principles [SOP] because I have nothing new to add. Leonid has, in a series of posts, outlined the in-principle objections to the SOP, while others have suggested that the SOP is a modest, necessary remedy for a difficult problem.
But as the debate has evolved, I think something has been lost in the shuffle. Let’s assume that the SOP is constitutional. There are still a number of unanswered questions about the efficacy of the SOP, the way it was adopted, and the strength of the evidence underlying it. Related questions: does the SOP do anything to actually rectify the problem it identifies? And if not, if we believe that the objectors to the SOP are acting in good-faith, shouldn’t we expect better from the LSO given its status as a regulator in the public interest? I think so. That the SOP is toothless is a sign of regulatory excess and pointless, costly regulation that won’t even accomplish the goal it sets out to solve.
I do not purport to say anywhere here that discrimination is not a problem. The experience of racialized licensees should be prioritized, and the LSO should be applauded for turning its mind to this issue at all. At the same time, I think it is important that we do not denigrate the sincerity of the “conscientious objectors” to the SOP. I need not link to the various hues-and-cries on Twitter, assaulting people like Leonid and Murray Klippenstein for being racist, privileged, etc etc. I think we should take as a given that the conscientious objections are rooted in deeply-held philosophical commitments. For that reason we should respect them. Leonid’s objection, for example, is exhaustively set out in his post here, where he outlines the genesis of his general philosophical orientation and how it applies to the SOP. We should assume that if the SOP is enacted, it will exact a constitutional cost—one that may or may not rise to a constitutional violation, but a cost nonetheless.
The SOP was adopted as part of a suite of initiatives designed to address the problem of systemic racism. The SOP is one requirement that exists in this suite of initiatives. The collection of initiatives was occasioned by a long consultation period, along with a study designed by the LSO and a communications firm “to encourage law firms to enhance diversity within firms, based on identified needs, and create reporting mechanisms.” The study consisted of:
- Interviewing key informants
- Organizing, managing, and recording the discussions in 14 focus groups with racialized lawyers and paralegals
- Organizing, managing, and recording the discussions in two focus groups with non-racialized lawyers and paralegals; and
- Designing a 35-question survey and collecting data from a large group of lawyers
Somehow, from this process, the SOP was born. None of the evidence gathered in the study pointed to the SOP as a necessary—or even desired—policy mechanism to accomplish the goals of the overall LSO Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion [EDI] Initiative. The causal link between the SOP and “accelerating culture shift” was never explored by any data in the study. All that was established by the study was that there was, indeed, discrimination in the profession.
But even on that score, there is no clarity on the breadth of the problem, and for that reason, no clarity on the mechanisms required to solve it. In this case, the challengers to the SOP have outlined some compelling reasons in an expert report why we might doubt that the SOP is a tailored, evidence-based policy—assuming, again, that the criticisms of the SOP levelled by a number of quarters is in good-faith. For one, there is a major confirmation bias issue in the study commissioned by the LSO. Survey respondents were already aware about the goals of the study. Participants in the focus groups were separated based on whether they were racialized or not, which does not lend itself to a random discussion of the issues. Perhaps most prominently, there was a sampling bias problem that led to the data underpinning the recommendations presented to Convocation—only a small portion of the over 40 000 licencees responded to the survey data, and according to the expert report, “it is possible that some licensees completed the survey multiple times…”
None of this should be taken as a given simply because an expert says so. This is an expert report filed by a party in the litigation. But it at least raises legitimate questions about the methodology underpinning the solution adopted by the LSO. Clearly, discrimination might be a problem in the profession, but we have no idea how much of a problem it is.
Even if we had some scope of the problem, the SOP is not necessarily linked to solving it. If we assume that objectors to the SOP are acting in good-faith, and therefore we believe that there will be some cost to them associated with abiding by the LSO’s edict, then we should be doubly sure the SOP will actually do something to solve the problem it purports to solve. But the LSO has offered no evidence that this particular policy mechanism is required, cost-efficient, or is even relatively better than other options. Nor has it explained why this policy mechanism is necessary for the soundness of the rest of its EDI policies.
Why should anyone care about this? Shouldn’t the LSO simply just be able to act in the face of a problem?
We know that inclusion in the legal profession is a problem, but as a regulator with delegated legislative authority under the Law Society Act, the legislature implicitly subjected the LSO to democratic norms. It established a system of elections in the enabling legislation itself, which can be interpreted to express a legislative desire to ensure that there is some accountability mechanism within the LSO for the exercise of its powers that are legislative in character. The LSO has the power to compel licensees through rules and bylaws, none of which need to be subject to any approval by the Cabinet (unlike the exercise of delegated legislative power to make regulations—see 63(1) of the Law Society Act). While there is an obvious mechanism to hold benchers and the administration of the LSO accountable through elections, the power of compulsion that the LSO exercises—and the broad powers it has been conferred by legislatures and the courts—counsel in favour of holding the LSO to robust standards of evidence-based policy-making. In other words, not only do we need to know that discrimination is a problem, we need to know whether it is truly “systemic” in order to craft appropriate solutions.
There is no evidence, even on a common-sense basis, that the SOP will do anything to solve the problem it identifies, assuming the problem is framed as the LSO says it is. One might say that the SOP will force licensees to reflect on the things they must do to ensure a more inclusive profession. I think this is Pollyannaish. More likely, people will file rote statements without reflecting on them, as Atrisha Lewis points out. Or they will simply write something that fits with what the licensee perceives the LSO to want. Unless the LSO is going to police the substantive content of each filing, there will be no way to know who is genuinely reflecting on the issue. Given the vagueness of what constitutes a “violation” of the requirement, we can expect discretion of prosecutions under the Law Society Act against those who do not adopt a “proper” SOP. The costs continue piling up when one thinks of defending the SOP in court, and the cost of enforcement.
Someone has to ask if the EDI initiative requires this SOP given the costs it exacts against principles of good government and against the good-faith constitutional objectors. The SOP seems to be questionable response to a problem of unknown proportions that raises significant constitutional concerns, even if those concerns do not constitute an in-law constitutional violation. I gather that the LSO perhaps did not expect this to be an issue, and are now painted into a corner. Like most administrators, they do not want to cede any regulatory power. So they must defend the SOP in court. But I think even they must recognize that the SOP is probably a bad policy mechanism for the problem of discrimination, no matter its scope.
The LSO should be held to a higher standard than this. We should expect evidence-based policy-making in the administrative state, especially where the LSO has the means (through the exorbitant fees it charges) to conduct properly designed research studies and to lessen the informational uncertainty designed to solve the problem. Some literature in administrative governance focuses on the cost of acquiring information within public institutions. Here, the costs for the LSO on this particular problem are not particularly high. And yet, we are left with a dog of a policy mechanism, one that is unlikely (even on a common sense basis) to solve the problem it purports to solve. At the same time, the costs of implementing it and enforcing it—both monetary and constitutional—are high.
All of this puts the SOP on the horns of the dilemma. Either it does something to accomplish the goal it sets out—it compels people to concern themselves with EDI as the LSO understands it—or it does nothing to accomplish anything, in which case it is costly. Surely our public regulator, that we ensconce in yearly fees, can do better.
This is fundamentally different than the claim that the SOP doesn’t go far enough. The problem is that it doesn’t go anywhere at all. I doubt it will solve any problem whatsoever.
Double Aspect 