After undergoing an investigation after an alcoholic spiral, he says lawyers should be careful disclosing to the regulator
Editor’s Note. On January 9, 2026, after this story was published, the Law Society Tribunal, Hearing Division, ordered that Robert Kivlichan’s licence be suspended on an interlocutory basis.
The regulatory system that governs lawyers in Ontario can turn a lawyer’s honesty about addiction and mental health into a source of risk, not protection, according to Toronto criminal defence lawyer Robert Kivlichan. He argues that when the Law Society of Ontario pulls a lawyer into its capacity machinery, it can strip away privacy and dignity, while demanding disclosure to people who are not medically qualified to assess it, even when the lawyer is already in treatment.
Kivlichan has learned that lesson from inside the process.
When his drinking and panic attacks spiralled during and after the COVID lockdowns, he tried to be transparent with the regulator while undergoing a routine spot audit. It did not go the way he expected.
He recalls that by early 2023, he was “a daily drinker” and, when not drinking, enduring severe panic attacks that sometimes left him unconscious, to the point where he “couldn’t even leave the house without having a panic attack.” He had opened his own criminal defence office in late 2019, and for a time, the work thrived. “My firm was going really well… I’ve never had a problem bringing in business,” he says.
As the isolation of lockdowns deepened his alcoholism and anxiety, the practice began to buckle. “By early 2022, I couldn’t stop. I was a daily drinker, and a pre-existing anxiety disorder began to manifest in the form of panic attacks. Sometimes I would lose consciousness. It got to the point where I would have a panic attack as soon as I got into the car in the morning. Eventually, I could barely leave the house.”
He did not come to that point from nowhere. He had graduated from the University of Ottawa’s law school, summered and articled at Bennett Jones LLP, and spent time on secondment at the Ontario Securities Commission. Big-firm work and corporate law never appealed to him; he was drawn to criminal law and the courtroom. At Bennett Jones and the OSC, he says the best days were when he could get into hearings and trials, drawn to “the theatre of it… the preparation, the intensity, the pomp and circumstance.”
Criminal defence work, with its trial-heavy docket, felt like the right fit. He left Bay Street, worked under well-known Ontario defence lawyer Edward Royle, and then struck out on his own. “I realized pretty quickly that I could build a practice… I was building a book right away,” he says.
What he did not fully confront was that he brought longstanding predispositions toward addiction into that new independence. He describes crossing the line into alcoholism not as a simple product of trauma, even though he grew up in “an abusive home” and endured things in childhood “which should never happen to a little boy.” The decisive factor, he argues, was the underlying condition itself: “The reason I crossed the line and became an alcoholic was because I’m very likely born with this thing,” he says.
By 2022, his addiction and anxiety were colliding directly with professional regulation. A routine spot audit by the Law Society of Ontario of his practice began in September 2022. At first, the books passed a preliminary review, thanks in part to a “great bookkeeper” who “has become like family to me.” As the file moved to further review in early 2023, his condition became unmanageable.
By January, he says, “I can’t hold it together anymore… I can’t even leave the house without having a panic attack. Now I’m losing consciousness when I have them more often than not.” He was seeing doctors, undergoing MRIs and brain scans, and was, in his words, “terribly ashamed” of how much he was drinking.
At that point, he attempted to do what regulators say lawyers should do: inform them early and seek help. “I said to them, I’m experiencing significant mental health challenges right now, and I don’t think I can participate in this right now. I need to take a step back and go get some help,” he says.
The response from the LSO was to take him to the tribunal for failure to cooperate with the audit. The tribunal imposed an indefinite suspension until he complied with the spot audit, plus a further 30-day suspension once compliance was complete.
He is explicit that he bears responsibility for not seeking help sooner. “I didn’t reach out for help in time. That is on me. I have to own that,” he says. Looking back to 2022, he adds: “I should not have been practising because it was the panic attacks, the PTSD, the alcoholism… It was so out of control.”
Still, once he disclosed his condition, he expected the LSO to shift into a supportive mode. Instead, he found himself in a separate capacity investigation that required him to hand over detailed medical information to non-medical staff. “Throughout this process, I have been forced to disclose sensitive medical information to individuals who are not medical professionals,” he says. “It seems as though the LSO has an absolute right to require medical information from licensees.”
In his interview on the CL Talk podcast, he describes how an LSO staff member demanded to know “what medications, if any, and what dosages,” despite not being a doctor, and he recalls his physician’s reaction: “He was shocked.” Kivlichan argues that “it’s a very one-sided approach” where “you don’t know where these medical records are going, you don’t know who’s looking at these records.”
He contrasts that with how impaired doctors are monitored: “The Ontario Medical Association has an independent third party that will monitor the physician… and it doesn’t go through the College of Physicians and Surgeons,” he says, whereas for lawyers, “all of this information that they’re asking for has to go through the Law Society of Ontario.”
For him, the effect is to turn disclosure into a hazard. “It’s almost as though they’re punishing the individual for the person they were, not the person they are today,” he says. He goes further when speaking directly to fellow lawyers: “My advice is don’t come clean to the law society because of… what the process will mean for your life, because it has actively made the recovery process more difficult,” he says.
Instead, he urges lawyers to protect themselves by first retaining counsel and consulting physicians before disclosing any information to the regulator. “Because the way the process is now, and I pray that it changes, I really do. It’s almost as though it’s weaponized against the individual,” he says.
In an email statement to Law Times, an LSO spokesperson said that law society members can utilize the Member Assistance Program, a confidential service funded by and fully independent of the Law Society of Ontario and LAWPRO.
“The LSO is committed to managing capacity cases effectively and with compassion, including by diverting appropriate cases from hearing. Where licensees with capacity issues have insight into their conditions, are willing to engage in treatment or have a positive record of compliance with treatment, and address any issues underlying apparent conduct issues, Professional Regulation develops appropriate resolutions without the need for a hearing, thereby preserving the licensee’s privacy,” the LSO spokesperson wrote.
Kivlichan does not pretend that suspension and investigation have been purely destructive. In hindsight, he says that the LSO suspension “was probably the best thing which could have happened to me because, once suspended, I was forced to seek treatment.” His path through rehab was not linear; he “went to rehab twice” and only achieved “lasting sobriety” after “a few tries,” he says. A key step, he emphasizes, was spending about a year in sober living: “You have to step back from your life and just do it… it’s been fantastic for me,” he says.
Today, he prioritizes recovery and health first, then practice. “I’ve actually built it back up to better than it’s ever been. … I’m able to take the time with cases now… Things have really come full circle and done a real 180,” he says. The capacity investigation continues, with an independent assessor now determining whether he was incapacitated during the period under scrutiny, but he is resigned to complying with conditions that are not “too onerous or invasive on my privacy and my dignity.”
His focus now is on using his experience to push colleagues and families to act sooner and more effectively than he did. He speaks often with relatives who want him to sit in on interventions for loved ones, and he warns them that they may need to change their own behaviour first. “The best thing that you can do is stop supporting them, let them fall flat like I did flat on their butt,” he says. As long as the person with an addiction can cling to “the wife, the kids, the job… those are ways to justify… continuing living the way that they do,” he says.
He wants lawyers to understand that they are not immune and that help exists, even if the regulatory path is fraught. “There is a way back… It’s not how we fall, it’s in how we get up,” he says. He also wants them to know he is available as a resource: “Help is available. Just go about it the right way. And I’m always free and available to talk to anyone who would like to,” he says.
For him, speaking publicly is part of staying accountable and making space for others. “It means a lot to me to be able to tell my story because I know [there are] so many people out there who … suffer in silence and … it’s got to stop.”
The LSO spokesperson wrote that in 2024, a total of 43 capacity cases were closed in its professional regulation department; 37 of those cases (86 percent) closed outside of its litigation services department. Of the six capacity cases closed in litigation services, only one involved a hearing.
“Professional Regulation has several resources for staff, most notably, the Capacity Advisor, who is qualified as both a lawyer and a psychiatric nurse. Since 2021, Professional Regulation has also retained the services of a third-party substance testing service to monitor the compliance of licensees with addiction issues,” the spokesperson wrote.
The LSO recently filed a Notice of Motion with the tribunal seeking to suspend or restrict Kivlichan’s licence.This article is based on an episode of CL Talk, which can also be found here:
The episode can also be found on our CL Talk podcast homepage, which includes links to follow CL Talk on all the major podcast providers.
