By: Ella Lim
I. Introduction
Access to justice is a fundamental value of the legal profession, and in Ontario, a statutory obligation.1 Since 2006, the Law Society Act has required the Law Society to “facilitate access to justice for the people of Ontario”.2 Yet the legal services gap in Ontario persists among low-income and middle-income Canadians.3 Three structural forces that sustain this gap include the lack of affordability of legal services, shortages of lawyers in underserved regions, and the chronic underservice of “personal plight” practice areas (i.e. family law, personal injury, human rights, and estate litigation) where legal aid eligibility is either not available or cutoffs are restrictive.4
It is precisely in personal plight practice areas that sole practitioners and small firms do the most essential work by serving individuals facing crises.5 Yet these same firms face structural barriers such as limited resources, thin margins, and minimal institutional support which make implementing and experimenting with legal technologies difficult. Where sole practitioners and small firms in personal plight practices have better access to and support for technology, it offers these firms a meaningful path toward greater efficiency, broader reach, and ultimately, bridging the access to justice gap within Ontario.
This essay argues that the Law Society of Ontario’s (LSO) current approach to technological competence is neutrally worded, but its impacts are structurally biased as it assumes all firms have the same resources. The LSO should complement its existing commentary on technological competence with an enabling framework that makes legal technology accessible and affordable for sole practitioners and small firms, who are key players in Ontario’s access to justice predicament.
II. The Rule of Competence
Following the Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s amendments to the Model Code of Professional Conduct, the LSO, along with other regulators, has since adopted a technological competence provision.6 Through Comment [4A] to Rule 3.1-2 in the LSO’s Rules of Professional Conduct, lawyers “should develop an understanding of, and ability to use, technology relevant to the nature and area of the lawyer’s practice and responsibilities,” including an awareness of confidentiality risks.7 It gives lawyers a contextual positive duty to adopt technology and understand its risks and benefits. The LSO elaborates that the standard of technological competence depends on “whether the use or understanding of technology is necessary to the nature and area of the lawyer’s practice and responsibilities,” further highlighting the flexibility of this duty.8
The inclusion of this commentary, along with the LSO’s Technology Guideline and recent white paper on generative artificial intelligence (AI), reflects the major technological developments in the legal services industry.9 Legal services are increasingly technology-mediated at every level: courts and tribunals require electronic filing, the LSO itself requires electronic filings for annual reports and Continuing Professional Development reporting, and land registration in Ontario must be completed digitally.10 These developments are also reflected in court decisions. Canadian courts recognize that technological competence is an integral part of the legal practice as stated by Justice Myers in WORSOFF v. MTCC 1168, “Counsel and the court alike have a duty of technological competency…” further highlighting that virtual proceedings are part of the modern legal practice.11 In Ontario’s neighbouring province, the Barreau du Québec has gone even further, mandating that all lawyers undergo a training course on generative AI as part of their mandatory hours in ethics and professional conduct.12
The trajectory is clear as we see that technological competence is moving from an optional to an integral part of the legal practice across Canadian jurisdictions. What this trajectory has not yet confronted is whether the profession’s smallest actors have resources, infrastructure, and institutional support to meet these standards. Telling a sole practitioner in a personal plight practice to “develop an understanding of, and ability to use, technology” without support, misses an optimal opportunity to bridge an access to justice gap.
III. Why Sole Practitioners and Small Firms are Structurally Disadvantaged
The reality for sole practitioners and small firms is that they oftentimes do not have the resources to adopt technology, preventing them from meeting the technological competence standards the LSO has imposed. The upfront costs of legal technology, the lack of information technology (IT) support, and the thin margins make staying up-to-date, or even experimenting with technology risky for these firms.13
A. Capital Barriers
One of the greatest barriers small businesses face in adopting technology is the capital costs required to do so.14 In most large firms, the significant overhead costs of updates to hardware, software, data research services, and more recently, adoption of AI tools, call for formal budgeting processes that allocate substantial resources to maintain efficiency and competency.15 Large firms generally have a greater capacity to absorb risk and undertake investments, making them more capable of adopting innovative approaches to the legal practice.16 Sole practitioners and small firms do not have the same resources and capacities. Oftentimes, these firms must prioritize paying employees, leasing an office space, purchasing professional liability insurance, or buying equipment and supplies for general operations.17 This is not to say that sole practitioners and small firms do not adopt technology at all. The existing costs of basic technologies (e.g., internet, telephone and faxing, and writing and editing tools) further prevent sole practitioners and small firm lawyers from adopting innovative tools that advance access to justice. Especially when the return on investment is not immediately evident, these firms may be hesitant to invest in technology.
B. Time and Learning Costs and a Lack of Professional Support
Capital barriers alone do not capture the full story. Even where technology is financially within reach, sole practitioners and small firms face the challenge of the time and expertise required to learn about and implement technology meaningfully. Unlike large firms with dedicated IT departments, training programs, and administrative staff to absorb implementation burdens, sole practitioners and small firm lawyers must navigate technology personally and on their own time. For example, in a two-person firm where the lawyer and a single law clerk share all administrative responsibilities, the hours spent learning a new practice management platform or AI research tool are hours not spent on client files. This is not a marginal inconvenience but rather a cost borne disproportionately by the law firms least able to absorb it.
The structural disadvantage is compounded by the nature of risks involved when adopting technology. Technological competence requires lawyers to understand and manage complex professional risks such as confidentiality obligations, cybersecurity risks, and in the context of generative AI, hallucinations and inaccurate information.18 While a large firm can distribute risk management among IT professionals and administrative staff, small firms do not have such infrastructure. The consequences of these risks may be even greater in personal plight practices, where one error falls entirely on one or a few lawyers and their clients, who are already vulnerable.
C. Resistance to Technology
Each of these barriers represents a concrete obstacle to meeting the technological competency standards articulated in the LSO’s Rules of Professional Conduct. The cumulative effects of these barriers coupled with a lack of institutional support, create a rational conservatism among sole practitioners and small firms towards the adoption and use of technology. This is not resistance to change itself or risk aversion. Sole practitioners and small firm lawyers are, by nature, entrepreneurial as they have chosen independent practice and are willing to build, adapt, and take risks.19 The response to innovation can be attributed to the lack of institutional support that makes absorbing risks difficult for firms with limited capital and professional support.
IV. Technology as a Strategic Fit for Personal Plight Practices
Despite the structural barriers sole practitioners and small firms face in adopting technology, there is a paradox. The very nature of the size and agility of these firms makes them perfect candidates to adopt legal technology. Unlike large firms, they have limited partnership consensus requirements, no displacement of existing labour, and fewer institutional barriers that make technology adoption less frictional. Especially in personal plight practices, the nature of the work aligns with the capabilities of legal technology.
Personal plight practices are often characterized by the high case volume, repetitive nature of work, emotionally demanding client relationship, and often geographically constrained client bases. These are exactly the challenges that technology aims to address. What follows identifies specific functions of technology, including document automation and drafting efficiency, AI-assisted legal research, and virtual practice, that create meaningful routes to legal services in personal plight practices and thereby further access to justice.
A. Document Automation and Drafting Efficiency
A significant portion of personal plight practices follow predictable document patterns. In family law, separation agreements and parenting plans require individualized details but share an underlying structure. The same is true in wills and estates, where simple wills and power of attorney documents are structurally consistent across files. Document automation software allows law firms to create fillable forms and automated templates that remove redundancies in legal drafting and time-consuming administrative work.20 Platforms like Clio allow client intake forms to be integrated with document automation systems in order to customize contracts based on case details automatically.21 For routine legal documents, the results are more efficient workflows, reduced likelihood of errors, and better client experiences.22 For instance, document automation allows a sole practitioner in family law to reduce the three hours spent drafting a separation agreement from scratch to automating it in under an hour. Efficiency allows legal professionals to dedicate time to strategic thinking and direct client interaction which in turn improves the quality of their services while making legal services more affordable.
The effects of this efficiency on access to justice are direct and significant. Family law clients facing divorce, negotiating division of assets, or arranging child custody and support are often navigating crises without adequate financial resources. The financial costs of finding legal representation in a family law litigation coupled with the limited eligibility threshold for legal aid in Ontario forces many litigants to go through the route of self-representation.23 The effects of self-representation for an individual include worse outcomes on economic issues in addition to bearing the burden of navigating emotional proceedings.24 The consequences go beyond the individual litigant as it increases costs for the opposing party and depletes the court’s resources.25 Technology-enabled efficiency not only makes law firms more productive but also presents opportunities for legal representation to be more affordable and minimize errors in high-stakes, emotional work, thereby reducing the harm that ripples in personal plight practices.
B. AI-Assisted Legal Research
AI-assisted legal research addresses a distinct but equally significant barrier in sole practice and small firms carrying on personal plight matters. Especially where the personal plight is related to state action, such as criminal defence and child protection, or where the opposing party is a well-resourced party, the limitations of constrained budgets and absence of junior staff in sole practice and small firms prove most consequential.26 AI-assisted legal research platforms, such as Westlaw Edge and Lexis+ AI, present solutions to these limitations by enabling users to summarize judicial decisions, identify relevant authorities, and validate citations, thereby facilitating efficient review and analysis of case law.27 By leveraging machine-learning technologies, these tools can significantly reduce the time required to conduct comprehensive legal research while improving the precision and completeness of legal analysis.28 AI-assisted legal research addresses two barriers to access to justice in personal plight practices. First, it enables sole practitioners and small firms to conduct comprehensive legal research efficiently, reducing per-file costs for clients. Second, it narrows the resource gap between small firms and institutional opponents by enabling a small team of legal professionals to conduct legal research at comparable depth and comprehensiveness.29 The results are more equipped lawyers who can better serve personal plight clients.
C. Virtual Practice and Geographic Reach
The access to justice issue extends beyond affordability to geography. Rural and remote communities across the province face chronic shortages of lawyers and a limited range of legal services offered.30 This stems from the economics of running a rural legal practice, where limited demand for legal services makes practices unsustainable, and in cases where a sole practitioner or small firm does exist, a general practice offering a variety of services may be unfeasible.31 Individuals facing personal plight in remote and rural communities, therefore, face a double disadvantage where legal services may be unaffordable and are physically inaccessible.
Technology such as secure video consultation platforms and electronic document execution offers the possibility of legal services to be delivered remotely to underserved communities. This provides a means for personal plight services to be offered to remote and rural communities in Northern Ontario where legal services are limited. Virtual practices expand the geographic reach of sole practitioner and small firms while addressing dimensions of Ontario’s access to justice crisis that cost reforms alone cannot reach. However, virtual legal services remain contingent on reliable internet connectivity and access to video-conference technology within rural and remote communities, underscoring that technological solutions must be accompanied by broader investments in infrastructure if the access to justice is to be meaningfully bridged.
It is evident that sole practitioners and small firms seeking to implement these systems and tools, to reduce redundant drafting, improve workflow efficiencies, save costs, and expand their geographic reach, face structural barriers related to limited capital, time and learning costs, as well as limited professional support. Where a technological competence standard is imposed by the LSO, it should be accompanied by practical guidance and dedicated resources. There is an urgent need to consider how the LSO can enable sole practitioners and small firms in personal plight practices to adopt technology to bridge the access to justice gap.32
V. The LSO Enabling Framework
The LSO’s approach to technological competence should shift from standard-setting to an enabling one. This shift requires the LSO to extend its existing functions in subsidizing initiatives, public education, and delivering practice management support into a domain where access to justice stakes are the highest. Three concrete mechanisms would constitute an enabling framework: a subsidized technology access program, targeted technology literacy resources, and an extension of existing practice supports to technology-related concerns.
A. Subsidized Access Program
Subsidized legal services are not a foreign concept in Ontario’s legal service sector. The federal government, through the Legal Aid Program, provides funding to legal aid services across Canada.33 Funding is limited to criminal law services and to specific entities such as Canadian educational institutions as well as Canadian non-profits and charitable organizations.34 The proposed subsidized legal program would not duplicate Legal Aid, instead it would extend legal aid eligibility to sole practitioners and small firms in personal plight practices beyond criminal law.
The proposed program would provide eligible law firms with grants to acquire and implement vetted legal technology tools. Eligibility criteria should reflect the program’s access to justice purpose, with considerations regarding the size of the law firm, geographical location, practice area, purpose of the funds, and the presence of a technology implementation plan to ensure adherence to LSO rules. Paralleling the LSO’s Access to Innovation program, participants can update the Technology Task Force to evaluate whether their initially proposed goals are being met, fostering accountability and generating data on what tools produce the greatest access to justice benefits.35
The primary concern for this program is funding. The process of launching a province-wide program and implementing application and review processes requires additional funds from the LSO, which can be obtained by imposing additional levies on licensees. This approach may raise concerns as there have been responses regarding the LSO’s already high annual regulatory fees.36 The most viable funding pathway is further consultation among stakeholders, specifically sole practitioners, small firms, and key players in Ontario’s access to justice efforts, to better understand what programs and resources are most effective. It may also include partnerships with existing organizations that share the values of access to justice.
The case for a subsidized program not only rests on access to justice values but on the inherent constraints of the LSO’s regulatory framework. The LSO prohibits non-licensed individuals from delivering legal services.37 Where licensed lawyers are financially and geographically inaccessible to personal plight clients, the prohibition itself becomes a structural contributor to the access to justice gap. A regulatory body that restricts who can deliver legal services carries a corresponding duty to ensure that the legal services are accessible to the public that it aims to protect. Subsidizing technology adoption is one mechanism in which the LSO can bridge the access to justice gap.
B. Technology Literacy Resources
Education also plays a critical role in expanding access to justice. Providing sole practitioners and small firms with free resources and webinars that go beyond what the LSO’s Technology Resource Centre offers, including how to select and use technology, and education on working remotely, cloud computing, and cybersecurity, would further support the access to justice gap.38 The existing resources do not offer any financial guidance to help sole practitioners and small firms acquire technology tools. Likewise, the LSO’s white paper on generative AI focuses on risk management rather than providing information on the specific challenges sole practitioners and small firms in personal plight practices experience when adopting AI. Resources should specifically address the lack of capital, time and training costs, as well as geographical considerations. This includes a vetted list of tools that would benefit a personal plight practitioner, cost tiers for legal service technologies, practice-area specific considerations for firms, and implementation guidance that address the structural barriers affecting sole practitioners and small firms. Moreover, recommendations that specifically address the virtual practice infrastructure for lawyers serving rural and remote communities would directly address the geographic dimensions of Ontario’s access to justice gap.
Some may argue that curating a specific tool recommendation would compromise the LSO’s institutional independence. However, this concern is answerable. The LSO has not to date endorsed any legal technology tools as legal professionals are expected to adopt technology within the parameters of their professional responsibilities.39 This proposal does not require endorsement, rather it requires the LSO to extend its existing vetting function. The LSO constantly vets and accredits continuing professional development (CPD) providers based on their history to provide quality legal training.40 Extending this function to legal technology tools would reduce the conservatism that limited resources, professional liability concerns, and ethical obligations have created among sole practitioners and small firms. A sole practitioner who knows that a particular tool has been LSO approved for small firm use in personal plight matters can adopt it with confidence.
C. Centralized Support
As part of its regulatory role, the LSO provides a Coach and Advisor Network (CAN) and Practice Management Helpline to guide lawyers regarding practice management and concerns related to the Rules of Professional Conduct.41 Both programs recognize that general written resources are insufficient for lawyers navigating complex, context-specific challenges. However, neither currently addresses technology adoption meaningfully.
Expanding existing resources to provide sole practitioners and small firms with technology support alleviates the structural barriers faced when adopting technology. This can include creating a new technology-specific intake stream under the CAN program, where technology-savvy lawyers can provide one-on-one guidance on best practice management for firms lacking adequate support. The Practice Management Helpline can also be extended to provide free, confidential support for questions regarding, but not limited to, how to adopt technology safely, cybersecurity concerns, and which tools meet professional standards.
Although this proposal does not replace the limited access to IT and professional support in sole practitioner and small firms, it would expand existing resources by providing mentorship and practice guidance on technology adoption, thereby empowering important actors in the access to justice gap. The impact on access to justice is direct. Personalized support would enable sole practitioners and small firms in personal plight practices to safely implement legal technology and serve more clients at more affordable rates. This outcome is what the LSO’s statutory mandate to facilitate access to justice requires.
VI. Conclusion
The access to justice gap in Ontario is not a new problem, and it will not be solved by any single intervention. It is a complex and persistent gap, especially in personal plight practice areas that sole practitioners and small firms often serve. Legal services technology offers a concrete and immediate mechanism for change where document automation lowers per-file costs, AI-assisted legal research narrows the competitive gap between small firms and institutional opponents, and virtual practice infrastructure extends legal services to underserved remote and rural communities. What stands between those benefits and the lawyers who could deliver these legal services is not unwillingness, but structural barriers that the LSO’s technological competence framework fails to address. The enabling framework this essay proposes requires the LSO to extend its existing functions to empower sole practitioners and small firms who play a critical role in Ontario’s access to justice gap. Through a subsidized technology access program, curated technology literacy resources, and an extension of the LSO’s existing practice management supports, Ontario can be one step closer to bridging the access to justice gap.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LEGISLATION
Law Society Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. L.8.
JURSIPRUDENCE
WORSOFF v. MTCC 1168, 2021 ONSC 6493.
SECONDARY MATERIAL: ARTICLES
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Law Society of Ontario, “Practice Management Helpline: FAQ” (last accessed 23 April 2026), online.
Law Society of Ontario, “Practice Supports & Resources” (last accessed 23 April 2026), online.
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Law Society of Ontario, “Technology Resource Centre” (last accessed 23 April 2026), online.
Mallory Hendry, “AI and the small firm: The great equalizer” (13 February 2025), online (blog).
Noel Semple, “Personal Plight: Mending the Market” (11 August 2017), online (blog).
Ontario Bar Association, “Response to the Law Society of Ontario’s Access to Justice Approach: Call for Comment” (31 May 2019) at 5, online (pdf).
Ronald D. Davis, “Lawyers in a Digital Age: An Emergent Duty of Technological Competence in Ontario?” (17 January 2022), online (blog).
Thomas A. Cromwell and Siena Anstis, “The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue” (2016) 42:1 Queen’s LJ 1.
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SECONDARY MATERIAL: CODES OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT
Law Society of Ontario, “Rules of Professional Conduct”(Ontario: Law Society of Ontario, 2022) ch III.