And, what if not the law Ontario lawyers have been learned in for the last four decades?
It started a long time ago, when Elizabeth I appointed Sir Francis Bacon has her special counsel. That continued after her death with her successors, and other lawyers got appointed over time. Initially, King’s counsel were lawyers who acted for the monarch. Given the client, they tended to be very well respected lawyers.
By the 19th century, it was more of an appointment that recognised the lawyer for their standing in the profession. That in turn spread through the Empire and there would be Queen’s Counsel appointed in the colonies as well.
Originally, it was just barristers who got appointed, but nowadays solicitors in the UK can also be appointed.
Nowadays, it’s generally a recognition of standing in the bar.
That’s just a joke, son, a joke. The formal designation on the patent is that Lawyer X is “one of His Majesty’s counsel, learned in the law.” For the first time in 40 years, there are lawyers in Ontario who are officially recognised as “learned in the law”.
When in court, we refer to opposing counsel as “my friend.” When opposing counsel has a KC, we refer to them as “my learned friend”.
The big question for me is ‘Why?’. All I can see coming out of this is a whole other round of Conservative patronage appointments…
(Why, yes, I do have an extremely low opinion of Premier Doug Ford.)
Well, there’s two reasons:
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Tradition! (sung in my best Tevye voice) Personally, I like traditions of the bar, and was sorry when Ontario and then Manitoba stopped awarding the QC.
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According to that article I linked, Ontario counsel who practice internationally (and there are a lot of them in Toronto) find that the lack of a KC hurts their competitiveness in other Commonwealth jurisdictions. This same type of argument was also advanced about 15 years ago to change the LL.B. to a JD, because Canadian law school grads found that it was hurting their competitiveness if they were trying to develop a cross-border practice.
The big issue for me is, how do they award them? If they just go back to the way it was in the 1980s, the same result will follow: patronage, and then abolished. But, Ontario lawyers are themselves saying it should be merit-based, and there are the examples of the other 8 common law jurisdictions that have a screening and recommendation process, as I outlined earlier in this thread. If Ontario goes that route, it’s much more defensible.
We’ll have to wait and see.
To a degree (heh), that works even domestically. I had a colleague who said to me once, “I have a JD, and all you have is an LL.B.”
“They’re the same thing,” I retorted.
“Yeah, but clients don’t know that,” he said,
Never mind. The way I look at it, I’ve got five letters after my name. He’s only got four. 
I didn’t switch either. I earned an LL.B., and that’s what I’ve got! (two actually).
I should speak with you about an LL.M. Always wanted one, and now that life has cleared up a bit, maybe it’s time.
Thanks - very informative.
Well, this is not looking good for a merit based KC
Caroline Mulroney had never been called to the bar in Ontario until last month.
She was, however, a member of the bar of New York and a former Attorney General. In some jurisdictions, the lawyer doesn’t have to be a member of the province’s bar to be eligible, and AG is one of the positions that normally gets a KC if the person didn’t have one at the time of appointment as AG
The former Liberal AG, Bryant, also got a KC in that list, although he now practises in BC.