Canadian Lawyer

12 J U N E 2 0 1 6 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m 1,000 lawyers actually went down slightly for the third straight year. In 2015, there were 99 claims per 1,000 lawyers, down from 103 in 2014, and a peak of 108 in 2012. Litigation accounted for the largest portion, at around 37 per cent of all claims last year, followed by real estate at just more than 23 per cent. The Rule 48 issue must be addressed "if we want to keep the good claims trend I have been describing," McGrath warned her fellow benchers. James Round, a litigation partner at Toronto's Torkin Manes LLP, told Law Times he expects to see a scramble in the courts over the next few months as lawyers seek to take action on cases filed before 2012 that will be subject to automatic dismissal. "In some cases, lawyers will be cramming in a lot of steps. When you have cases that are nearly ready for trial, I think they'll be looking at what they have to get in place over the next few months before they're comfortable setting it down for trial; whether it's discoveries, expert reports, or whatever else. That is going to really pick up momentum in the second half of the year," says Round. "If you've got a case that is nowhere near trial, then it's going to be a case of making sure you take the steps you need to avoid falling victim to the deadline, like setting a new timetable or bringing a motion for a status hear- ing." LawPRO has also created a Rule 48 transition toolkit to help lawyers understand and avoid the risks associ- ated with the new rule, available at practicepro.ca. Despite the upheaval associated with the new rule, the insur- er has welcomed the changes overall, noting on its web site that the old ver- sion has cost it almost $10 million in claims since 2012. Round says the new Rule 48 achieves a better balance than the previous incarnation, which he calls "inefficient" due to the number of inadvertent administrative dismiss- als and unnecessary status hearings it prompted. However, he says it had at least one upside, in that the require- ment for a notice of dismissal served to alert lawyers to "phantom clients" they may otherwise have forgotten about. Maia Bent, the president of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association, says she expects fewer claims in the long run for LawPRO once the Jan. 1 deadline passes. "The people who might have trouble are those who don't have a proper tickler system. If they have become comfortable relying on the warning from the court that their case is about to be dismissed, that could be a problem," says Bent, a partner with Lerners LLP in London, Ont. — MICHAEL MCKIERNAN \ AT L A N T I C \ C E N T R A L \ P R A I R I E S \ W E S T REGIONAL WRAP-UP Insurer worried changes in civil procedure rules will boost claims Continued from page 11 Untitled-5 1 2016-05-12 2:22 PM

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