Do you live in Alberta and need the help of a lawyer? If that’s the case, you might want to learn more about how to use the Law Society of Alberta Directory. The Law Society is the regulator of the legal profession in Alberta located at 333 11 Ave SW Suite 700, Calgary, AB.

Each province has its own law society, which is normally located in the region’s largest city. In Alberta’s case, the law society’s offices are in Calgary rather than the provincial capital of Edmonton.

The best way to find a specific lawyer in Alberta is to use ClearWay’s find a lawyer service where you can also leave a review for the lawyers that you’ve worked with in the past. See our homepage.

The Alberta Law Society

A rich history stretching back to 1907 underpins the Law Society of Alberta Directory. The entity, standing as the pivotal pillar in Alberta’s legal system, serves as a crucial resource for both legal professionals and the public. It not only assists in legal service discovery but also ensures regulation and ethical adherence in the province’s legal profession.

As per the most recent statistical data, the Directory registers over 10,000 active lawyers across Alberta. This grand tally represents a wide spectrum of specializations and expertise, from corporate law to environmental, criminal, immigration, and beyond. Over the years, the Directory’s meticulous record-keeping has become a goldmine for information about Alberta’s legal landscape.

Discover Legal Professionals

The Directory’s capacity to uphold its mandate can be seen in the diversity of its members. An impressive 52% of those registered are male, while 48% are female, reflecting the push for gender parity in Alberta’s legal profession. The representation of visible minorities also charts an encouraging trajectory, with a steady increase noted over the past few years.

A significant role of the Directory is ensuring adherence to a stringent ethical code. In 2022 alone, 200 disciplinary actions were undertaken to uphold the standards of the profession. The cases varied from minor reprimands to suspensions, signifying the Law Society’s commitment to preserving the integrity of legal practice in Alberta.

Comprehensive Alberta Law Society Directory

Lawyers in urban centers like Calgary and Edmonton dominate the Directory. However, a critical piece of its mission is reaching out to rural communities. Recent data from 2023 shows an encouraging trend with a 4.5% increase in lawyers serving rural areas compared to the previous year. This increase reflects the Law Society’s push for legal accessibility throughout the province, no matter how remote the location.

The Directory’s influence extends into the educational sector too, with statistics from the University of Alberta indicating an estimated 70% of law graduates registering with the Law Society. Their inclusion within the Directory not only extends the range of legal services available to Albertans but also continues the tradition of mentorship and the sharing of legal knowledge across generations.

While a vast majority of lawyers specialize in private practice, the Directory reflects a growing trend in alternative legal careers. It reported an increase of 10% in legal practitioners taking up roles in non-profit organizations, corporations, and government services over the past five years. This trend exhibits the shifting dynamics of the legal profession, reflecting the modernization and diversification of law.

Find Top Lawyers

Within the Law Society, numerous committees operate to manage and regulate different areas of the profession. The latest statistics show that 1,200 members contribute their expertise to these committees, overseeing everything from practice standards to insurance and risk management. These volunteer efforts demonstrate the dedication of Alberta’s legal professionals to maintaining high professional standards and supporting their peers.

Technology also plays a significant role in the Directory’s operations. In 2023, the Directory reported a 30% increase in its online traffic, evidence of the growing demand for easily accessible legal services and the broader adoption of digital tools in the legal profession.

This digital transformation has also seen an increase in security measures to protect the integrity of the Directory’s data. Over the last year, there were zero successful cyber-attacks on the Directory’s systems, thanks to robust cybersecurity protocols implemented by the Law Society of Alberta.

As the legal profession continues to evolve in Alberta, the Directory stands as a testament to the dedication, diversity, and resilience of those who choose to serve the province in this capacity. It is not only a resource but a mirror of Alberta’s legal community – one that reveals the evolution and future trajectory of the legal profession in the province.

The benchers

The board of directors of the Law Society of Alberta is an elected body of individuals known as benchers. Basically, lawyers vote for other lawyers who want to become benchers, who then oversee the self-regulation of lawyers authorized to practice in the province.

This means that lawyers are not regulated by the provincial government, and while there have been calls by some to get rid of the law society and switch to government regulation instead, so far the Law Society of Alberta remains the sole overseer of the practice of law in the province.

Members of the legal profession

However, the LSA should not be confused with the Alberta branch of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), which is a professional association for members of the legal profession. The bar association and its various provincial branches serve no regulatory functions, unlike provincial law societies.

The CBA, rather, is an “ally and advocate” for lawyers aimed at promoting fairness in the justice system and advocating for legal reforms while upholding “equality in the legal profession and … eliminating discrimination.”

Alberta Branch of the CBA

The Alberta Branch of the CBA, according to its website, supports members’ “professional and commercial interests” by offering professional development and mentorship programs, with more than 5,000 members, including lawyers, judges, and students across the province.

While the CBA’s Alberta arm offers professional development programs, the Law Society of Alberta stopped mandating its members to attend continuing professional development courses in February 2020. But that shouldn’t stop you from researching the backgrounds and histories of lawyers in the province should you find yourself in need of an advocate or legal representative for a wide range of legal issues that can crop up in Alberta.

Licenced law practitioners

Like the Law Society of Alberta, which offers a directory of licenced law practitioners in the province to help members of the public find a lawyer that’s right for them, ClearWay Law can also connect you with lawyers in Alberta that can help. If you need to speak to a lawyer in Alberta and don’t want to go through the Law Society’s online directory, you can contact us.

If you were looking up the Law Society of Alberta because you are unhappy with your lawyer, we can help find you a new one if you’ve had trouble on your own. With thousands of lawyers in Alberta, it may be difficult to know who to turn to especially if you’ve never had to navigate the justice system in the province before.

Maybe it’s your first time going to court for a driving infraction that threatens your livelihood, or perhaps you’re getting a divorce and your soon-to-be ex-spouse is threatening to withhold access to family assets, or even worse, your children.

Law Society of Alberta Directory

The LSA offers an online directory to help find the right law firm or sole practitioner for you, with forms available to fill out where you can specify the details about your particular situation. Those details are crucial to provide when trying to figure out the type of Alberta lawyer that you need. Someone who practices family law, for example, won’t be of much help if you’re trying to sue a contractor who screwed up a renovation project.

The LSA’s directory is searchable by members of the public with information about areas of practice and other important aspects of a firm’s specialties. In addition to searching by name or location, you can also use the directory to find out what languages a firm offers services in, as well as information about so-called “limited scope retainers.”

Includes disciplinary information

Limited scope retainers can be cost-effective agreements with lawyers where they can agree to represent you on a limited basis, rather than from start to finish of your legal issue, such as drafting court pleadings.

The directory also includes disciplinary information about individual lawyers going back to 2015. After contacting the LSA’s lawyer referral service, staff members with the society’s customer service team reviews your information and send it to multiple lawyers, who offer a free 30-minute phone consultation to “discuss your legal issues, explore your options, evaluate potential costs and help determine if the lawyer is a good fit for your legal issue.”

Search online for legal help

It’s important to mention that you got connected with the lawyer through the law society’s referral service to get the free half-hour phone consultation.

However, the LSA reminds members of the public that lawyers will not give out free legal advice and that the society’s referral services are only meant to “connect you with a lawyer, not provide advice.”

By the way, this is the same service that ClearWay offers. We collect information specific to your situation and send it off to law firms who will call you directly. We are not a law firm and we don’t offer legal advice, but we can help people find the right lawyer. Not everyone has several hours of free time to search online for legal help even with the LSA’s online directory, so why not let ClearWay help guide you on your path to justice? It’s a great service, and you should give it a try!

If you are curious about what we do here at ClearWay, please visit our page for lawyers. When the Law Society of Alberta’s Directory isn’t good enough, don’t hesitate to contact us!

If you are looking for a lawyer in Alberta, fill out the form below. Once we have a good understanding of the issues you’re up against, we will have several lawyers contact you on a date and time of your choosing, completely at your convenience. (However, we can only connect you with a lawyer in Calgary or Edmonton, so take your pick.)

ClearWay can connect you with lawyers that can help with any and all areas of law, whether it be a family issue such as a child custody arrangement or complex business disputes involving multiple parties and big money at stake.

Law Society of Alberta

The Law Society of Alberta sets out the code of conduct of lawyers and law firms; it’s not a law-making body. The LSA is independent of the Alberta provincial government and doesn’t have any power over the administration of the province’s court system, such as the Court of Queen’s Bench.

The Court of Queen’s Bench is similar to the Supreme Court of British Columbia and the Superior Court of Ontario. They all have different names, but similar rules as the highest-level courts in their respective jurisdictions.

Here at ClearWay, we believe all provincial law societies in Canada need to work hard to open up the legal market, which is heavily skewed toward wealthy individuals and large corporations. This is not meant to demean or degrade the legal profession which has dominated Canadian politics since confederation. The fact is, too many people are handling their own cases in courts across the country, and this is true in Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench.

Law Society Of Alberta Directory

For legal matters at the provincial court level, maybe people can figure things out on their own if they have the time and patience to familiarize themselves with court rules and procedures. But in Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench, the rules can be extremely complicated and esoteric to the point where even native English speakers can end up frustrated, confused, and out of luck.

If people are not hiring lawyers in an effort to save money, this often comes at a high cost of losing their cases, and the legal industry in Alberta and indeed across the country needs to do something to fix the problem. Justice is supposed to be blind, not prohibitively costly to the point of shutting people out and leaving them with their faith in the system shaken or completely lost.

Tools to Find a Lawyer in Alberta

The Law Society of Alberta continues to grow when it is forced to, which eventually leads to the creation of its directory to help people find a lawyer. Before that, people were on their own and at the mercy of a murky market where all lawyers are far from created equal.

On a nationwide scale, though, Canada is far behind other countries like the United Kingdom and the United States in terms of legal innovation. In Canada, we are still worrying about referral fee percentages and if remote consultations should be allowed.

We now live in a digitally-based world, and heavily-regulated professions like lawyers need to be far more proactive in adapting to technological advancements that may increase people’s access to justice.

In England, for instance, they are already doing law firm IPOs. These public offerings have flooded the legal market in England with money, allowing law firms to use injections of capital to improve their technology and hire customer satisfaction managers to be more responsive and sensitive to clients’ needs.

Alberta Bar Association Directory

During COVID-19, it became obvious that things need to change. Many Calgary and Edmonton law firms that were already struggling to survive came under even more financial hardship. Pandemic-related public health orders at courts across the country only compounded existing backlogs and scheduling difficulties.

But luckily, when people come under stress, they start to innovate first and ask questions later. Alberta lawyers could no longer meet their clients in person. Therefore, they had to use Skype. Some law societies changed the rules since all their lawyers were breaking the rules. This was a clear indication that law societies only change when they are forced to.

At ClearWay Law, we are pushing for innovation in Alberta. Since we are not a law firm, we are not regulated by the Alberta law society. We are able to try creative things that law firms in Alberta are scared of or unable to try, such as our lead generation service for lawyers.

While it may sound silly that this would be “innovative” to anyone outside of the legal industry, we believe we are one of the first lead-generation services for lawyers in Alberta.

Alberta Lawyers

Lawyers in Alberta are often afraid of the law society since they don’t want to get in trouble or shake things up in a profession with a rich history and entrenched power structure. This causes a lot of law firms to avoid trying to do things in new and innovative ways.

At ClearWay Law, we’ve long believed that lawyers should focus on taking care of their clients first. If a lawyer is more concerned about their own reputation than their client’s needs, it doesn’t take a scholar or ethics expert to determine how this is wrong.

Clients pay the bills, and that should mean that clients are in charge. That’s not to say that lawyers should be contemptuous of the rules that regulate them, but it’s also important for them to speak up and be fierce advocates for reform when the rules aren’t serving the public at large.

Law Society Of Alberta Directory

For example, verifying a client’s ID over Skype is not inherently “dishonest,” and it should not be against Law Society rules. The regulator also needs to allow lawyers to provide commissioning over Skype.

Virtual commissioning is just the first step in a technology-driven legal industry.

Again, if you don’t have time or don’t want to use the Law Society Of Alberta’s Directory, you can reach out to us and we will help find you a lawyer!

Law Society Directory in Alberta

The Law Society of Alberta’s Directory, as mentioned earlier, allows you to search for a lawyer with specified criteria. You can look for a family lawyer in Edmonton or you could look for a female lawyer who does criminal law in Calgary and speaks Hungarian or Spanish. It all depends on what you need.

Joining The Legal Profession in Alberta

The Law Society of Alberta also has a program for First Nations and Indigenous peoples, who make up nearly seven percent of the province’s population. The program is meant to connect law firms in Alberta with first nation students and allows lawyers to learn more about First Nation issues.

In addition, it can encourage more Alberta lawyers to get into First Nation law practice, while also encouraging Aboriginal people to go to law school and become lawyers after years of discriminatory and culturally biased practices that Canada is only beginning to reckon with in its second century of existence.

Clearly, the legal profession in Alberta faces similar challenges to those in other provinces, but while the system may not be perfect, it’s the only one we have. With that in mind, you can use the Law Society of Alberta Director to find a lawyer, but you can also leave that work to us.

You can contact ClearWay and we will help connect you to a lawyer in Alberta that fits your budget with experience in the right area of practice. It’s often said that good help is hard to find, but for good legal help, ClearWay’s help is just a few clicks away!

How Can I Find a Lawyer in Alberta?

You can use the Law Society of Alberta’s lawyer referral service. You can also reach out to ClearWay and we will connect you to a lawyer based in Edmonton or Calgary.

There is a program you can use with the Law Society of Alberta if your matter is less than $25,000. It is called the fee mediation program, but the law society doesn’t have the power to force lawyers to reduce their legal fees.

You are allowed to represent yourself. But whether you should is perhaps the more pertinent question.

How do I know if someone is licenced to practice law in Alberta?

You can look them up using the lawyer directory service offered online by the Law Society of Alberta on its website. If the lawyer is listed in the directory, they are not authorized to practice law in Alberta. You can then reach out to the Law Society of Alberta to find out why this person is not listed as being registered as a lawyer in Alberta, which may spur an investigation into an unauthorized practice.

We will have a lawyer contact you depending on your needs after reviewing the information you provide on our user-friendly forms.

Our Alberta lawyer connection service is free for the public.

Alberta Law Society Directory: Find Top Lawyers

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