The Ontario firm's annual compliance calendar

One month and one repeating day

A small Ontario practice has fewer fixed regulatory dates than its owner usually fears. Two land in March, one repeats every month, and an obligation added in 2025 is confirmed alongside the March filing rather than getting a date of its own.

The monthly one is the only item on this list that a records review will test in depth, and it is also the one most likely to be quietly behind.

March 31 — the Annual Report Filing

Under Part II of By-Law 8, every licensee files an Annual Report Filing with the Law Society by March 31 each year, submitted electronically in the format the Law Society specifies.

March 31 — CPD reporting

Lawyers and paralegals who are practising law or providing legal services complete at least 12 CPD hours in each calendar year: a minimum of 3 Professionalism Hours on topics related to professional responsibility, ethics or practice management, and up to 9 Substantive Hours.

One professionalism hour each year must address equality, diversity and inclusion, and it counts toward the three rather than being additional. Only professionalism hours require accreditation by the Law Society; substantive hours do not, and may cover non-legal subjects where those are relevant to the practice.

Hours can be reported at any point on or before March 31. Reporting them as they are completed, rather than in a single March session, is the difference between a filing and an archaeology exercise.

Every month — the trust comparison

The monthly comparison of the trust bank balance, the trust ledger control, and the total of the individual client balances is the obligation that repeats twelve times a year, and the one a spot audit examines most closely.

It is also the only item here that cannot be caught up on convincingly. A comparison prepared months late may arrive at the right numbers, but it cannot demonstrate that the balances agreed at the time — which is the thing the requirement exists to show.

Since 2025 — a client contingency plan

Since January 1, 2025, licensees in private practice must develop and maintain a client contingency plan for preserving, carrying on or winding up their professional business, appointing one or more licensees as plan administrator. It matters most to the people least likely to have one: sole practitioners, and the sole shareholder of a professional corporation.

At a minimum, the plan requires the administrator to:

• Notify the Law Society's Trustee Services Department and the licensee's professional liability insurer as soon as possible after learning the licensee has stopped practising — temporarily or permanently — through illness, disability, death or other sudden absence.
• Tell existing clients the licensee can no longer continue with their retainer, and either transfer their files and property to another licensee or return them to the client.
• Where applicable, attempt to access the trust accounts in order to return or transfer trust funds as the clients direct.

Licensees practising at a firm instead confirm that the firm's plan meets the minimum requirements, and that plan has to cover the situation where nobody at the firm is able to carry on the business. The plan is reviewed at least once a year to keep it current, and compliance is confirmed in the annual report — beginning with the 2025 report, due March 31, 2026. Failing to report compliance may itself lead to an administrative suspension.

Making the year boring

None of this is intellectually demanding, which is precisely why it slips. The dates are known a year ahead, the contingency plan changes rarely once written, and the monthly comparison takes far less time on a fixed day than it does after a gap.