Goodbye Bar?

Since 1797 the Law Society of Ontario has been the body that licenses and regulates lawyers and paralegals in this province. It is their job to ensure that Ontario’s legal professionals meet a high level of professional conduct and competence, and to set a high standard of legal education.

What is the Bar?

 The current format for assessing the legal education of an aspiring lawyer is a set of tests commonly referred to as “the Bar Exams”. The Bar has been in place in Ontario since 2006, and was last revised by the LSO in 2011. It currently consists of two competence based exams, The barrister examination and the solicitor examination. Both are administered by the LSO itself. Both exams are open book and multiple choice, focusing on analysis and application rather than memorization. According to the LSO these exams cover seven key areas of law, public law, family law, criminal law, civil litigation, real estate law, wills and estates, and business law, as well as professional responsibility and practice management. The tests are designed to assess an applicant's cognitive ability in three fields, knowledge/comprehension, application, and critical thinking. 

What are the issues?

The LSO’s Professional Development and Competence committee claims that this system is flawed. In a report published last month, the committee provides statistics demonstrating that the current system is disproportionately affecting candidates with law degrees from outside of Canada. This, the committee claims, could have a substantial impact in this province with its changing demographic of prospective legal professionals. For context, in 2023 test takers with Canadian law degrees passed the barristers exam at a rate of 88.27%, and the solicitors at a rate of 81.04%. Comparatively, in the same year, test takers with foreign law degrees passed those exams with rates of 57.78% and 49.73% respectively. The committee claims that this poses a problem of accessibility to the legal professions. 

Beyond this issue, the LSO also cites other issues with the current system, such as operational challenges and an increased rate of accommodation requests. They say that these exams are resource intensive and financially expensive to develop and administer. The LSO is committed to providing equal and equitable treatment to test takers, in accordance with its duty to accommodate under the Human Rights Code. This being said, the LSO claims that an increased rate of accommodation requests, as well as what kinds of requests are being made, is making this practice unfeasible. 

What would change? 

If the LSO acts on the proposal, the Bar Exams system would be scrapped after two decades, in favour of a skill training program that would take several months, followed by a final test with “scenario based assignments”.  As of now, it is unclear exactly how this program would work in Ontario. Before Ontario had the Bar system, licensing was based on a multiple course system that required candidates to pass multiple tests. With regards to the proposed changes, the chair of the Professional Development and Competence committee, Atrisha Lewis told the press that “The intention is still to test for substantive law, it's just (that) the method of testing might be different”, per the CBC. 

That being said, Ontario would by no means be going into this process without a roadmap. Several provinces have already done away with the Bar system, including PEI and Nova Scotia in the maritimes, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta in the prairies, and starting next year, British Columbia. Most of these provinces have adopted the PREP system, or Practice Readiness Education Program, which provides training on a modular system and covers topics such as professional ethics, client relationship management, interviewing and negotiation, and practice management. This program is usually administered by the Canadian Center for Professional Legal Education, but could be copied and administered by the LSO itself. The program offered by the CPLED takes nine months on a part time basis, or fourteen weeks on the accelerated path. 

Opinions in the legal community. 

Opinions in the legal community vary. Clearly the Professional Development and Competence committee is in favour of this proposal, but they are requesting Ontario’s community of legal professionals to provide input on the matter. The committee is taking opinions on the proposal until the 31st of January 2026. Some Law students have weighed in on the issue. In a CBC interview Iman Nedeem, president of the student society at TMU’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law said “It is sort of a drawback to think that I'm going to be pushed into another nine months of school after I graduate to do something that I already was ready to do,”. Some of Ontario’s top legal voices have expressed opinions as well. Trevor Farrow, dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, expressed mixed feelings, “We need to make sure that those who are trained outside of our Ontario law schools and Canadian law schools actually do have that adequate knowledge. And I think that's a question mark right now for the Law Society,”. Ontario’s attorney general Doug Downey took a harder stance, tweeting that “Any changes that water down standards by scrapping written exams simply aren’t acceptable,”. 

What would the implications be?

It is impossible to know now what the effects of such a change would be for this province. The LSO seems convinced that this change would only benefit the province. At least we can be confident that a change to the examination process would not be a complete overhaul of the licensing system for Ontario’s legal professionals. Even now completion of the exams is only one of the requirements to be licensed as a professional in this province. The other two requirements being experiential training (ie; articling), and a requirement of good character, ensuring high ethical standards and a “respect for the rule of law and the administration of justice and conduct themselves with honesty, integrity and candour” per the Law Society Act. As of now there is not a plan to remove these requirements, only to restructure the examination. 

Sources:

Bornmann, Roy. Rep. Professional Development and Competence Committee. Toronto, Ontario: Law Society of Ontario, 2025. 

“Law Society of Ontario Home | Law Society of Ontario.” Law Society of Ontario. Accessed November 28, 2025. https://lso.ca/home. 

Weingarten, Naama. “Ontario Bar Exam for Future Lawyers Could Be Scrapped, Replaced with Skills-Based Course | CBC News.” CBCnews, November 24, 2025. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-bar-exam-replaced-9.6987640.