EDMONTON – An Edmonton lawyer has been disbarred by the Law Society of Alberta, after a disciplinary committee hearing found him guilty of two citations for sexual harassment, and four other citations, including distributing confidential client information without consent. Gurpreet Gill was found guilty by the LSA of six citations at a 2024 committee hearing, following three complaints filed against him. Among citations were a pair of allegations of sexual harassment from 2016 involving a 19-year-old female law student interning with his practice, and a 2020 incident in which he shared sexually explicit videos with a female interviewing for a criminal law assistant job. Gill faced an LSA committee sanctioning hearing in March 2025, and in February 2026, they ruled that he was to be disbarred and pay $60,311.79 fine. .The 2020 incident revolved around Gill sending sexually explicit videos with the victim as part of what he claimed to be part of the interview process to determine their "maturity level and emotional quotient.”According to the LSA 2024 decision, Gill claimed he warned the victim about the videos during their second interview when he said, "some material which will be sexually explicit and heavy material, and [he] talked to her that one would be the two videos and then would be the RCMP letter." He also told the committee that he wanted to see if the victim could translate from Punjabi to English, as some of his clients require language help, which is why he sent the videos. The victim claimed he never told her about the videos and their sexually explicit content, nor did he inform her that he wanted her to translate them. The 2024 hearing document states, "Following the interview on December 16, 2020, (the victim) received two videos from Mr. Gill showing persons having sexual relations and the videos were of explicit sexual content (Videos)."The videos were from one of Gill's prior clients, involving the client and an unidentified female, whom Gill did not receive content from before sharing. After receiving the content, the victim told the LSA she was "shocked and taken aback from the videos," and she later messaged Gill. The victim responded to Gill's content with a message that said, "This conduct does not fit in the professional standards to hire prospective employees and has caused me emotional distress. Please do not follow with any more messages and phone calls.".Gill told the committee that he could have done things differently, calling his thinking "out-of-the-box," however, he would not admit to them that it was inappropriate to have sent them and denied the sexual harassment allegations. "It is very important for a criminal lawyer’s assistant to have enough of a maturity level where he or she can watch and assimilate matters related to sexual assault," reads a letter from Gill's lawyer sent to the LSA in 2022 that was included in the 2024 hearing documents. "My own practice dealt with cases of sexual assault and child pornography, etc. cases which involved being able to review explicit material, making notes, and translating words from Punjabi to English language." The committee ultimately ruled in favour of the victim, saying that, regardless of his intent, he should have known that sending the message would be unwelcoming and offensive. "While Mr. Gill may not have intended the Videos to be sexually harassing, from an objective point, these videos cannot be construed as anything other than sexual harassment," reads the committee's 2024 decision. "It is unrefuted that the Videos were sexually explicit and there was not an objectively rational reason for providing those Videos to (the victim).".Gill's citations for sharing confidential client information without consent and interfering with an LSA investigation also relate to the 2020 case. The LSA argued, and it was determined that the above mentioned videos were shared without the involved client, who argued that Gill misled them and that they did not understand the consent release form Gill had them sign, due in part to their limited ability to write and speak English. Gill was found guilty by the committee of interfering with an LSA investigation when he advised his client, whose videos he had shared, not to respond to emails from the LSA regarding the 2020 sexual harassment investigation, and then Gill responded by writing two emails under his client's name. .Gill was also found guilty of sexual harassment from a series of incidents in 2016 involving inappropriate and intimate comments, messages, and actions directed towards a law student interning at his practice. The 2024 hearing document states that Gill would confide in the intern regarding intimate personal matters, make unprompted comments about how "brilliant," "smart," and "pretty" she was, send non-work-related texts to her, and buy an expensive purse and tell her to wear it to the office. The pinnacle event in the matter involved an incident when some of the office staff went to a restaurant following a case, during which Gill, who was intoxicated, sent the intern a stream of texts that the LSA committee deemed were unwarranted, sexually suggestive, and inappropriate.."The Committee recognizes that Mr. Gill appears to have been intoxicated at the time of the Earls restaurant incident," the 2024 decision reads. "While that may be the case, that cannot in any manner be a defence of the conduct of Mr. Gill." Regarding the other elements, the committee ruled that the actions on their own are "necessarily improper." "However, these acts, viewed in the context of the age of (the intern), her short time at Mr. Gill’s office and the suggestive nature of these actions taken as a whole, were sexually suggestive and harassing," the committee decision reads.Gill's 2024 hearing saw him accused of two additional citations related to sexual harassment; the committee found him not guilty of one, and the other was dismissed when the LSA counsel said they were not calling witnesses for it. The committee also found Gill guilty of two citations for failing to comply with the LSA rules. These citations involved improper handling of trust funds and failure to meet client identification and verification requirements.
