"a legal profession that fails to respond runs the risk"

Should lawyers continue to be self-regulating?  The answer can only be guided by assessing the metric which is supposed to motivate the principle of professional self-regulation: the best interest of the public which we serve.  Two of our three closest common law sister jurisdictions (namely, England and Australia, with the US being the holdout, except for some minor incursions in the context of securities law) have decided that lawyers should no longer be self-regulating and that regulatory power should be held by the state.  Will Canada venture down the same path?  Paul Paton offered some thoughts here.