DGW Law Corporation

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

DGW Law Corporation, a former Victoria, BC law firm serving primarily First Nations clients, entered a consent agreement admitting professional misconduct relating to widespread trust accounting failures between 2020 and 2022, including improper deposits to the general account, non-compliant EFT withdrawals by non-lawyer staff, improper trust withdrawals creating shortages, inadequate books and records, failure to complete trust reconciliations, and an inaccurate trust report. The deficiencies arose largely from inadequate staff supervision/training and a software transition. No dishonesty was found and no client suffered loss. The firm agreed to pay a $50,000 fine.

Duties found breached:

• Accounting records, reconciliation and reports
• No improper use of client money
• Report serious misconduct of others
• Self-report to the regulator

Mitigating factors:

• No prior professional conduct record
• Deficiencies compounded by post-COVID-19 remote working and software transition from PCLaw to Clio/QuickBooks
• Took remedial steps to update recordkeeping and hired external accounting firm to re-create records
• Early admissions of misconduct
• No client suffered financial loss
• Trust shortages were eliminated by deposits made by the firm