Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope of the Court of Québec’s intervention is confined to the narrow annulment grounds in article 646 C.p.c., not a review of the merits or reasonableness of the fee assessment.
• Central issue is whether the arbitral procedure respected audi alteram partem, given that the client was repeatedly prevented from presenting evidence and submissions on the quality of the legal services.
• The arbitrator’s statements mischaracterised the Conseil’s mandate by excluding any discussion of service quality, despite the regulation expressly allowing fee assessment based on the quality of services.
• Exclusion in practice of the client’s 49 exhibits and related testimony on the quality of services created a process where the Conseil later concluded there was “nothing in the evidence” to support her position.
• This procedural handling was found to have made it impossible for the clients to fully present their case within the meaning of article 646(4) C.p.c., amounting to a breach of natural justice.
• As a consequence, the arbitral award reducing but largely maintaining the lawyer’s bill was annulled and the Conseil was condemned to pay judicial costs, with the precise monetary value of those costs not specified.

Factual background
Marie Ève Boudreault and Michel Milot were clients of lawyer Me Christian Crevier in a civil matter before the Superior Court of Québec. Following the services rendered, Me Crevier issued a statement of account dated 19 October 2021 in the amount of 5 660,62 $. The clients disputed this account, objecting not only to the hourly rate and the scope of the mandate, but also to what they viewed as the inadequate quality of the services rendered. In November 2021, they initiated the statutory process under the Barreau du Québec’s fee dispute scheme by submitting a request for conciliation of the account to the Bureau du syndic of the Barreau. Conciliation failed, as recorded in the syndic adjoint’s report of January 2022, and the matter proceeded to arbitration before the Conseil d’arbitrage des comptes des avocats du Barreau du Québec.

Arbitration of the lawyer’s account
After the breakdown of conciliation, the clients filed a formal request for arbitration of Me Crevier’s fees. Their challenge extended to several elements: the hourly rate, alleged absence or limits of mandate, and in particular the quality and usefulness of the professional work done in relation to the progress and outcome of their Superior Court case. Ahead of the arbitral hearing, the clients faced technological difficulties transmitting their documentary exhibits to the Conseil for a virtual hearing, but ultimately filed a substantial documentary record: 49 pieces aimed largely at substantiating concerns about the quality of the legal services. The arbitration hearing took place on 12 July 2022 and lasted approximately 49 minutes. On 16 September 2022, the sole arbitrator rendered an award partially upholding the lawyer’s bill. The arbitrator maintained most of the fees, reducing the account from 5 660,62 $ to 5 332,94 $, and ordered the clients to pay that reduced amount.

Mandate and powers of the Conseil in fee disputes
The dispute arises within the framework of the Règlement sur la procédure de conciliation et d’arbitrage des comptes des avocats. This regulation creates a specialized mechanism whereby clients may first seek conciliation of unpaid legal bills and, failing conciliation, submit the matter to the Conseil d’arbitrage des comptes. Under these rules, the Conseil may maintain or reduce the disputed account, determine any reimbursement due, and even adjudicate on certain costs or interest. Importantly, the regulation states that, in doing so, the Conseil may “notamment tenir compte de la qualité des services rendus,” meaning that quality of services is not only relevant but explicitly integrated into the fee-assessment mandate. Case law referenced in the judgment emphasises that the Conseil’s role is not confined to a mechanical calculation of hours and rates; it extends to examining all questions connected to the reasonableness of the account, including context, quality of work, and proportionality of fees with reference to the Code of ethics of lawyers, which requires that fees be just and reasonable, justified by circumstances and proportionate to services rendered.

Proceedings before the Court of Québec
Dissatisfied with the arbitral outcome, Boudreault and Milot seized the Court of Québec with a demande d’annulation of the arbitral award. Their essential complaint was procedural rather than substantive: they argued that the arbitrator had prevented them from presenting their evidence and making submissions concerning the quality of the services, depriving them of their right to be heard. The Conseil resisted the application, maintaining that the arbitrator had validly exercised case-management powers, applied appropriate evidentiary rules, and merely structured the debate without preventing the clients from advancing their arguments. The Court, presided by the Honourable Hélène Maillette, therefore had to determine the precise scope of its authority in reviewing such an arbitral award and whether any of the limited grounds of article 646 C.p.c. were made out.

Legal framework for setting aside the arbitral award
Under the current Code of Civil Procedure, article 648 C.p.c. stipulates that a demande d’annulation is the sole recourse against an arbitral award. The Court cannot sit in appeal on the merits, nor can it review the correctness, fairness, or reasonableness of the arbitrator’s assessment of the fee account. Article 645 C.p.c. further bars the court from examining the substance of the underlying dispute when seized with a request to homologate or, by extension, to annul an award. The only available intervention space is the “corridor étroit” defined in article 646 C.p.c., which lists five grounds for refusing homologation—grounds that, by mirror effect, justify annulment. In this case, the clients invoked paragraph (4) of article 646 C.p.c., arguing that it had been “impossible de faire valoir [leurs] moyens” because they were effectively barred from presenting their case on the quality of services. The Court noted that the procedural guarantees in article 646—reflecting fundamental principles of natural justice—are of public order and cannot be contracted out of or overridden by arbitral procedure. A violation of these guarantees, particularly the right to be heard and audi alteram partem, compels the court to annul the award.

Breach of the right to be heard before the Conseil
The Court’s analysis turned heavily on the transcript and audio recording of the arbitral hearing. Very early in the hearing, after dealing with logistical matters, the arbitrator told the parties that his role was not to decide on the quality of the lawyer’s work, but only on the amount to be paid in relation to the bill. He expressly instructed both sides to confine their interventions to the issue of fees, stating that the proceeding was not to re-try the underlying case, re-do the initial hearing, or decide on the competence or quality of Me Crevier’s services. When Boudreault queried this, explaining that she believed quality of services was intertwined with the fee dispute, the arbitrator reiterated that questions of quality or alleged misconduct belonged to the Barreau’s disciplinary process, not to fee arbitration. This framing led the client to confine her oral submissions mainly to rate and lack of detail regarding hours, despite having filed numerous documents bearing on service quality. Later, when Boudreault tried to comment substantively on the lawyer’s handling of the file, the arbitrator again redirected her and instructed her to limit her remarks strictly to the question of fees and the unpaid bill. The Court found that, in practice, these repeated interventions had two critical effects. First, they misled the client about the actual scope of the Conseil’s mandate, which by law explicitly allowed consideration of quality. Second, they effectively barred her from presenting a central part of her case—namely, that the services were of insufficient quality to justify the billed amount. Although the arbitrator mentioned in the written award that he had reviewed the filed exhibits, the Court held that bare documentary review did not cure the defect: without oral explanations and testimony to link these documents to the clients’ theory of the case, their evidentiary value remained largely opaque. Thus, the client was denied a meaningful opportunity to present a relevant, potentially decisive line of evidence.

Contradiction between the procedural exclusion and the reasons
The Court underlined a telling passage from the arbitral reasons, where the Conseil observed that the clients principally contested the quality rather than the quantity of the lawyer’s work, yet concluded that “there was nothing in the evidence” to demonstrate that the services were not of quality. This reasoning was inconsistent with what had happened at the hearing: the arbitrator had himself shut down attempts to develop and explain the quality-based challenge, while at the same time later faulting the evidentiary record for lacking support for that very challenge. This internal tension reinforced the conclusion that a breach of audi alteram partem had occurred. The Court emphasised that not every refusal of evidence warrants annulment; mere errors in appreciation of proof are not enough. Here, however, the exclusion of a relevant category of evidence—service quality—struck at the core fairness of the process and directly engaged the ground in article 646(4) C.p.c. on impossibility of presenting one’s case.

Consequences of the annulment and future of the fee dispute
Having concluded that the rule of natural justice was violated, the Court annulled the arbitral award. It clarified that annulling the sentence does not extinguish the clients’ arbitration request. Their original demande d’arbitrage remains valid and must be treated as still received and transmitted under the regulation. The fee dispute thus remains unresolved and must proceed anew before the Conseil, starting at the stage of appointing the arbitral decision-maker in accordance with the regulation (in this case, a sole arbitrator due to the monetary threshold). The Court observed that, in light of the nature of the defect, it would be appropriate that any new arbitrator be someone other than the one whose award was annulled, to safeguard the objective appearance of impartiality when reconsidering evidence the previous arbitrator had deemed irrelevant. The Court nonetheless declined to issue a formal order remitting the matter to the Conseil; it simply set aside the sentence and left the regulatory process to resume in the ordinary course, including the clients’ option, if they wish, to withdraw their arbitration request under the regulation’s conditions. In the dispositive, the Court of Québec declared the arbitral award of 16 September 2022 null and condemned the Conseil d’arbitrage des comptes des avocats du Barreau du Québec to pay the judicial costs. The successful parties in this judgment are therefore the clients, Marie Ève Boudreault et Michel Milot. While they obtained vacatur of the award and an order that the Conseil bear the court costs, the decision does not quantify those costs or any other monetary award, so the exact total amount granted in their favour cannot be determined from this judgment alone.