Darcia Senft is employed with The Law Society of Manitoba as General Counsel and Director of Policy and Ethics. In that capacity, she provides opinions on matters affecting the Law Society and governance of its members and provides advice and direction to lawyers relating to professional responsibility and ethics. She has worked at the Law Society since 1996. For approximately thirteen years, she prosecuted members who were charged with professional misconduct or incompetence. Prior to that, she was Director of Discipline at the Law Society and oversaw the work of the complaints investigation unit.
Darcia was called to the Manitoba Bar in 1988 and to the Ontario Bar in 1993. She has been an active member of her profession having served as a Bencher of the Law Society and a non-Bencher member of various committees. She is also a Life Council Member of the Manitoba Bar Association (for having served three two-year terms as an elected member of Bar Council) and is a previous member of its Executive. From 2016 – 2019, she was a member of the CBA Ethics and Professional Responsibility Sub-Committee and served as its Chair for two of those years. She was recently reappointed to that national sub-committee.
For the past several years Darcia has acted as Co-Chair of the Federation of Law Societies Access to Legal Services Exchange Group. In February of 2019, Darcia was appointed to Legal Aid Manitoba’s Public Interest Law Centre Advisory Committee and she continues to serve on that Committee.
Darcia served as a member of the Legal Help Centre’s Programming Committee for several years. She has been a keen supporter of the Manitoba Theatre Centre, having participated as a cast member in many joint fundraising productions with the Manitoba Bar Association.
Darcia has been an occasional instructor for the Law Society’s CPLED (Bar Admission) program and a presenter at Law Society Continuing Professional Development programs. For several years, she was a sessional lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba where she co-taught the Legal Profession and Professional Responsibility or “ethics” course. She has presented at conferences and forums hosted by The Law Society of Ontario, the Manitoba Bar Association, the Federation of Law Societies, the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics.