In 2025, the Law Society of Ontario’s compensation fund subcommittee denied financial compensation to a victim client of a criminal defence lawyer who sexually exploited her, defamed her online and threatened to kill her.
Now a court has ordered the society to reconsider the victim’s request in a ruling that opens the door for victims of dishonest lawyers to be compensated for the loss of their sexual integrity — not just the loss of misappropriated money.
To date, the law society has never compensated anyone for sexual misconduct by lawyers or paralegals, it told CBC. That’s because the society considers reimbursing clients for lost money given to lawyers and paralegals to be the primary purpose of the fund.
The victim at the centre of Wednesday’s Divisional Court ruling is Leanne Aubin. The disbarred Ottawa man who used to represent her is James Bowie, who is currently serving prison time for crimes against Aubin and another woman and has asked for leave to appeal his convictions with Ontario’s highest court.
The Wednesday ruling by Justice Andras Schreck, with Justices David Corbett and Owen Rees agreeing, states that “loss” in the Law Society Act (which governs the law society) clearly “refers to more than misappropriated trust funds and includes any loss ‘in connection with’ the lawyer’s professional business.”
The law society’s denial letter to Aubin “also stated, incorrectly, that the Fund was ‘governed by specific criteria under the Fund’s Guidelines'” when in fact “the purpose of the Guidelines … is to guide, not govern.”
One of Aubin’s lawyers, Christine Johnson, said in an interview Wednesday that Aubin considers the decision good news, but is also “a little bit exhausted” after seeking redress in civil and criminal courts for coming up on four years, and is preparing for the next battle to fight.
Johnson called the court’s decision an important one because it clarifies for the law society and the public that the society “does in fact have the jurisdiction” to compensate people for more than just financial harm.
The legal director of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, which pushes for legislative and policy reforms to advance gender equality in Canada, also highlighted the decision’s significance.
“I think it’s a really important recognition of the broad kinds of harms that survivors can experience and the broad discretion that the law society has in deciding whether or not to award compensation,” Kat Owen told CBC Wednesday.
As it stands, there aren’t enough “meaningful legal responses to the harms that survivors suffer,” Owen added. “So if we’re thinking about whether this increases access to justice or increases access to legal remedies, I think it’s a really important step forward.”
Earlier this year, Owen told CBC she thinks “it’s deeply unfair that we have a system that’s set up to prioritize people who have means as opposed to, like we see in this case, an incredibly vulnerable person who comes to a criminal defence lawyer in a moment of immense need, in a situation with a huge power imbalance, and is really left without any sort of meaningful remedy for that kind of harm.”
The law society, meanwhile, is “reviewing the decision” and had no other comment to make Wednesday, according to an emailed statement from a society spokesperson.
Bowie offered Aubin to pay for his legal services with sexual favours in 2022, according to Ontario’s Law Society Tribunal and a civil judgment.
He kept making the offers even though Aubin wasn’t interested, and when she found another lawyer and talked to reporters about Bowie, he revealed confidential information about Aubin online, the tribunal found.
(Bowie also twice threatened to kill Aubin and tried to harass and extort another woman into obtaining a gun for Bowie so he could “end” Aubin, according to an Ontario Court judge. He was sentenced to four years in prison in September, and was disbarred in December.)
Aubin successfully sued Bowie in 2024. He was ordered to pay her more than $235,000 in damages and costs for his “staggering breach of the trust obligations a lawyer owes to a client” and his “offense to the court’s sense of decency,” the Superior Court judge ruled.
In total — including earlier awards for costs leading up to the civil default judgment — Bowie owes Aubin $255,000.
But Aubin hasn’t been able to collect any of it, because her lawyers have found nothing to collect.
Bowie had been living with his parents for some time before he was imprisoned. His licence to practise law was suspended around the time Aubin’s allegations first surfaced, so he couldn’t work. And he’s since been disbarred, meaning he’ll have to find another career when he re-enters society.
Making compensation harder for Aubin to find was the elimination of Ontario’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in 2019. The Victim Quick Response Program+ that replaced it provides financial support to victims of crime, but the claim has to be made within 45 days of the crime and only certain Criminal Code offences are eligible. (Death threats are not.)
With the damages and costs from Bowie unavailable, Aubin requested $230,000 from the compensation fund run by the Law Society of Ontario that covers intentional misconduct by lawyers. (Separate liability insurance that lawyers pay for takes care of most negligence claims.)
Aubin “lost her job, her financial security and years of her life to trauma, fear and depression,” her lawyers wrote in a letter to the law society’s compensation fund subcommittee last fall.
“Given Mr. Bowie’s current circumstances (as well as his general lack of cooperation with the [Law Society of Ontario] and court proceedings), we expect that enforcement of the civil orders against him will be an uphill battle,” the letter continued.
It’s “difficult to imagine” that Aubin “will ever be able to collect any of the $255,000 in damages and costs that have been awarded to her,” the lawyers added.
Aubin’s request was rejected in November.
Bowie “exploited [Aubin’s] vulnerability” and she “suffered severe emotional and financial harm,” reads the reply letter from a lawyer for the fund’s subcommittee.
But Aubin’s “losses — while substantial and deserving of recognition — arose from egregious personal misconduct and abuse of the solicitor-client relationship, rather than from financial dishonesty involving trust funds.”
“We are truly sympathetic to [Aubin’s] experience and regret that we are without jurisdiction to assist,” the letter concludes.
Christine Johnson and Emilie Taman, Aubin’s lawyers, asked for judicial review of the rejection in Divisional Court, and the hearing took place in May in Toronto.
The difference of opinion boils down to how “loss” is defined.
Ontario’s Law Society Act states that the compensation fund helps “to relieve or mitigate loss sustained by a person” because of the dishonesty of their lawyer or paralegal “in connection with [the lawyer or paralegal’s] professional business.”
The act does not specify what kind of loss. It just says “loss.”
But the Law Society of Ontario’s website does specify, stating loss of “money” — and section 8 of the law society’s claim guidelines further defines loss as “the difference between what the lawyer … received from the claimant or on the claimant’s behalf, and the amount that was earned and accounted for, and/or returned to the claimant.”
Support is available for anyone who has suffered sexual misconduct. You can access crisis lines and local support services through this Government of Canada website or the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. If you’re in immediate danger, or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.
