Law Society of British Columbia, Rules of Professional Conduct for British Columbia

Rule 6.1-2 of the BC Rules of Professional Conduct indicates that lawyers supervising students are responsible for providing students with meaningful training and exposure to and involvement in work that will provide students with valuable knowledge and experience of the law. Supervising lawyers are responsible for students acting under the supervising lawyer’s direction.

Rule 6.3-1 prohibits a lawyer from directly or indirectly discriminating against a colleague, employee, client, or any other person. They hold special responsibility to respect and uphold the principles and requirements of human rights and workplace health and safety and stay up to date with the law relating to discrimination and harassment. The commentary sets out expansive detail with respect to discriminatory or harassing behaviour and what constitutes the same, the adverse effects, and the circumstances in which it can arise.

In a similar vein, rule 6.3-2 prohibits a lawyer from harassing a colleague, employee, client, or any other person. The rules define harassment as an incident or series of incidents involving physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct that might reasonably be expected to cause humiliation, offence or intimidation to the person subjected to the conduct. They further set out a non-exhaustive list of circumstances where harassment may occur, such as verbal abuse, bullying, abuse of authority, assigning work inequitably, etc. 

Rule 6.3-3  indicates that a lawyer must not sexually harass a colleague, employee, client or any other person. The rules define harassment as an incident or series of incidents involving “unsolicited or unwelcome sexual advances or requests, or other nonverbal conduct of a sexual nature”. Commentary 3 indicates that lawyers are expected to not condone or be willfully blind to conduct in their workplaces that constitutes sexual harassment. Similar to the Ontario Rules of Professional Conduct, there are no rules regarding the sexual harassment of lawyers by others in the course of their work as supervisors.

Law Society of British Columbia, Rules of Professional Conduct for British Columbia (British Columbia: Law Society of British Columbia, 2024) rule 6.