Progress on the 21 Recommendations

The Society must immediately appoint an Independent Implementation Lead, who will be responsible for the implementation of all recommendations in this report. To maintain complete independence, the Implementation Lead will be appointed by a panel led by Regaining Trust author Douglas Ruck, and include representation from the Implementation Task Force, and a third-party recruitment firm focused on advancement of equity-deserving communities.

The Implementation Lead, acting on behalf of the Society, working in collaboration with the Society’s Equity & Access Office, and reporting to Council, will collaborate with Douglas Ruck for several months to ensure adequate handover and communication with relevant equity-deserving organizations across Nova Scotia. The Implementation Lead will be responsible for finalizing policies and legislative drafts and submissions and will continue in the role for a finite term, concluding when recommendations have been implemented and permanent resources have been established.

The Society must provide mandatory training for all staff members, Council members, committee members, contracted professionals, and other interested parties—on systemic discrimination, unconscious bias, and cultural competency—in relation to hiring, retention, promotion, and other workplace matters. This will be supplemented by the following related actions.

1. a) Provide trauma-informed professional development resources, education, and training: This will cover discrimination-based harassment, including understanding, identifying, preventing, reporting, and the implications of bystanders.
2. b) Provide the Racial Equity Survey Report and Regaining Trust to all members of the legal profession: These reports will be shared along with an offer to provide professional development support including cultural identity, pronunciation of names, and cultural, religious, and spiritual days and/or observances.
3. c) Develop resources for law firms: Resources are intended to assist law firms in creating and implementing DEIA programs, with input from all equity-deserving groups. The Society’s Equity Lens Toolkit will be included in these resources and will be regularly updated.
4. d) Develop accredited programs: Programs will focus on advancing equality and inclusion within the legal profession and will be made mandatory under professional development guidelines, starting within the Society, and extending externally.

e) Make ongoing DEIA training mandatory: Ongoing DEIA training must be made mandatory for Society staff members and all members of the legal profession.

The Society must conduct an immediate review and rewrite of existing antidiscrimination policies, practices, and guidelines to ensure they explicitly prohibit all forms of discrimination in relation to race, religion, spirituality, socio-economic background, gender, sexual orientation, and all disabilities, including physical, intellectual, and emotional disabilities. Specific policy review areas include the following recommendations.

1. a) Conduct Deeper Review in Relation to Black and Indigenous Lawyers: Included in this review, the Society must conduct a deeper review covering how its application of regulations and policies affect racialized lawyers, notably Black and Indigenous lawyers, with a particular focus on investigation of complaints.
2. b) Update Equal Opportunity Employment Policy: The Society must review, update, and safeguard the perpetuity of its equal opportunity employment policy to ensure recruitment, advancement, and termination activities are based upon merit, qualifications, and performance.

c) Review Recruitment Processes: The Society must ensure its recruitment processes are covered in all DEIA training measures, internally first, then applied externally under its regulatory responsibilities. This step also must provide for a covenant to be reviewed yearly by an appropriate committee to ensure the processes continue to be impactful.

Ensuring that individuals feel comfortable and empowered to issue complaints about racism is crucial for fostering a supportive and inclusive environment.

Acknowledging that many workplaces have reporting policies and procedures in place, but have not been enforcing them consistently, the Society must establish safe methods for individuals to report discriminatory behaviour—whether experienced personally or witnessed as a third party— along with well-defined processes for investigating allegations of discriminatory behaviour.

In addition, disciplinary related panels and committees in the legal sector have exhibited similar shortcomings in their ability to provide circumstances whereby a member of the respective subject’s equity-deserving community is present.

No equity-deserving individual should be asked to participate in either a reporting or disciplinary situation without at least one member of their community present in that room.

These reporting and disciplinary procedures must ensure that any investigation involving a member of an equity deserving group is conducted in complete confidence through an independent Ombud, without fear of reprisal, and include participation by at least one member of the individual’s equity deserving community.

Such measures should include a trauma-informed complaint process, with informal and restorative justice options. Detailed related recommendations are as follows.

a) Appoint Systemic Discrimination Ombud: As part of establishing the means for safe, confidential, independent reporting, the Implementation Lead will appoint a Systemic Discrimination Ombud, who will serve as an advocate and watchdog, to guide the public and members through the complaints process.

The Ombud will investigate and rule upon complaints of discrimination, while ensuring confidentiality and protection from retaliation or perceived negative impact.

The Ombud also will assume the enduring aspects of the work of the Implementation Lead and continue to work with the NSBS Implementation Task Force to monitor, assess, and report on policies, practices, and programs related to anti-discrimination efforts within the legal profession.

b) Ensure Equity-Deserving Representation in Every Room: No equity deserving individual should be in a room—whether to report an incident or to discuss a disciplinary matter—without a person from the same equity-deserving community also in that room, whether as part of a panel, as representation, or as a witness.

The Society must create and lead the implementation of a policy to ensure that all reporting or disciplinary panels have equity-deserving representation reflecting the subject individual. The Society must further require that all law firms with five or more lawyers—and other organizations within the legal community—adopt these measures, and report results. If an organization fails to do so, the organization must provide information as to why it was not possible.

c) Prohibit Retaliation in Investigations: Enforce strict anti-retaliation protective safeguards ensuring confidentiality for individuals reporting, investigating, or acting as witnesses. Any form of retaliation will be treated as a separate violation of the anti-discrimination policy and may result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment or membership. This policy will begin with the Society internally with a view to extending to the broader legal community.

d) Ensure Transparency and Communication: All reporting procedures must feature a transparent communication system to ensure complainants remain informed of investigation progress, findings, and actions taken.

e) Eliminate Non-Disclosure Agreements: Employment related NDA’s can be used to silence members of equity-deserving groups who might otherwise report their experiences of discrimination. As a result, NDAs can be used as a tool to perpetuate systemic discrimination within an organization and should be reviewed by all organizations within the legal community to consider their elimination from employment agreements.

f) Provide Informal Reporting Options: While systemic discrimination is a serious matter and must be investigated in the same manner that other workplace issues are investigated, reporting must be encouraged—even if it means informal reporting. Some individuals may be more comfortable utilizing more informal models.

To accommodate these choices, the Society and other organizations within the legal profession must create, maintain, and promote the use of safe spaces—places whereby individuals can discuss their experiences with peers, mentors, and counselors. This option would be strictly confidential and non-retaliatory and would exist outside a formal reporting or disciplinary mechanism.

The Society must regularly collect, analyze, and share statistics on Society members and staff members, to identify patterns of systemic discrimination or disparities, including those demonstrating barriers to retention and advancement of lawyers from equity-deserving groups, such as hire-back decisions.

The Society also must publish annual reports on related diversity and inclusion initiatives, tracking progress against data collected, evaluating effectiveness, and adjusting accordingly.

The Society further must require that other organizations in the legal community develop similar data analysis plans.

The Society must review, revise, and implement an effective and authentic accommodation policy to ensure individuals with disabilities have equal access to employment, promotion, services, and facilities.

Reasonable accommodations must be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential job functions, participate in programs and services, and access facilities.

This policy must be activated at the Society internally, then shared externally with the expectation that other organizations in the legal community follow suit.

Any policy designed to tackle systemic discrimination will be effective only if enforceable. Knowledge without action may be considered collusion.

Proper respect and regard to the recommendations will require the Implementation Lead to have the authority to implement and enforce them.

All anti-discrimination policies, whether internal to the Society or those involving the wider legal community, must be given the strength to succeed, as follows.

a) Strengthen Enforceability of Internal Policies: The Society must strengthen the enforcement of its internal harassment and discrimination policy to ensure all complaints are investigated promptly and thoroughly, with enforceable disciplinary action for violators. There must be a serious response to discriminatory behaviour, including and up to, termination of an individual.

b) Establish Disciplinary Measures to deal with Discriminatory Practices in Legal Community: The Society must establish a tiered system of disciplinary measures—ranging from instructive to constructive to corrective—for lawyers found practising in a discriminatory manner.

The Society must review and update the Code of Professional Conduct to explicitly identify systemic discrimination and reprisal as breaches of professional ethics, with clear statements relating to the consequences to such breaches.

The Society must implement diversity recruitment programs and mentorship initiatives to promote underrepresented groups in legal professions.

The Society must actively promote diverse representation within Council, committees, and leadership roles, ensuring equity-deserving groups’ voices are heard. This will unfold fully upon supplemental interviews conducted with members of equity-deserving groups to determine why some individuals currently do not wish to serve on Council or committees.

The Society must establish meaningful support systems for those who experience discrimination, including access to counselling, legal assistance, and advocacy resources. These resources must be provided externally to all members of the legal community.

The Society must create formal platforms for communication and collaboration with a number of relevant community organizations and advocacy groups to address systemic discrimination collectively. The Society will lead this effort, with the expectation of wider involvement by all members of the legal community.

As anti-discriminatory leadership begins only by ensuring diverse membership at the table, the Society must create a higher percentage of seats at leadership tables for members of equity-deserving groups. This will commence through interviews with current leaders, members of the public, and members of Council, to determine where additional voices are needed and can be engaged.

Using that information, the Society must develop a Council succession plan that ensures diversity in membership and leadership, including diverse representation across all equity-deserving groups, in addition to region, firm size, years at the bar, and profession—to include additional members of the public.

We must ensure we do not turn our backs on individuals who are bringing diversity to the leadership table. We therefore must ensure safeguards are in place. The Society must implement a mechanism to provide, upon appointment, all the supports and resources that equity-deserving Council members and leaders need to truly thrive in their roles.

The Society must ensure its own workplace policies—and the policies of other members of the legal community—respect religious and spiritual observances, by, for example, refraining from scheduling mandatory events on major religious holidays or observances, as well as being mindful of time of day, daily prayer rituals, and dietary requirements. The Society must lead the way for the legal community to recognize and respect all religions and spiritual observances.

The Society must conduct regular Council reviews to assess effectiveness, inclusiveness, and opportunities for modernization, all under the systemic discrimination lens.

The Society must implement clear policies holding law firms accountable for concealing or supporting discriminatory practices, ensuring transparency and responsibility.

The Society must foster a cultural shift in how the profession approaches practising law, where embracing diversity and practising inclusively becomes the norm, not the exception. This will include the following.

a) Enforce Respectful Workplace Rules: The Society must develop and enforce Respectful Workplace Rules, internally, then shared externally with other members of the legal community.

Using the most recent governance review as a backdrop, the Society must undertake an extensive revision of its governance and regulations to ensure all recommendations noted in this report are fully actionable.

The review especially should consider the following key areas:

a) Improve Efficiency: The review must examine whether current governance structures are so onerous that they impede meaningful change and should be examined to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

b) Have Greater Public Input: The review must ensure a higher level of public representation on Council and committees, as well as greater engagement outside the Halifax Regional Municipality.

c) Extend Terms for Meaningful Contributions: The review must consider extending the terms of President, First VP, and Second VP beyond one year, to ensure the ability of Executive Council members to undertake and complete significant changes.

Governance changes must be meaningful, while maintaining the integrity of the Society’s responsibility to regulate the legal profession in the interest of the public.

The Society must conduct a comprehensive review of The Legal Profession Act to dismantle institutional impediments towards diversity and inclusion, ultimately to ensure the elimination of systemic discrimination.

The Society may need to advocate for higher levels of legislative change required to ensure regulations can reflect all recommendations contained within this document.

Regular measurement check-ins and reviews will be essential to the success of this report. The Society must define successful outcomes, then measure and quantify those outcomes. The Society also must ensure they are meeting with representatives from equity-deserving communities, for follow-up.

It must be appreciated that not everything is measurable with numbers. This report originated because of numbers—in the form of the survey— and personal insights, gained through interviews. For that reason, we must measure our success through a combination of follow-up survey work and follow-up interviews. Then, the Society must use this feedback to refine strategies and improve outcomes over time.