Category Family Justice

Access to Justice for Children: A B.C. Continuing Legal Education Society Conference

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**Repost from Canadian Legal Ethics listserv**

An exciting two day B.C. Continuing Legal Education Society conference called Access to Justice for Children  will take place in Vancouver, at the Pan Pacific Hotel, on May 14-15, 2015.

From the conference description:

The Canadian legal profession is engaged in critically important discussions about access to justice. Ensuring access to justice for children must be a key component of those discussions. Children in Canada have broad legal entitlements under domestic and international law, including significant participatory rights, which have the potential to shape their everyday lives in positive ways and to protect them when they become involved in court, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), or administrative processes […] All lawyers have obligations to prepare, with the participation of children, Child Rights Impact Statements for all legislative and policy decision making.

The conference agenda can be found here.

Keynote speakers include:

  • Senator Raynell Andreychuk,  a former lawyer, judge and diplomat and chaired the Senate Standing Human Rights Committee that produced the report Children: the Silenced Citizens on Canada’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and
  • Dr. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a B.C.’s Children’s Representative and a passionate advocate for children and for effective legal representation for them.

Other out of province speakers who are committed to advancing children’s rights include:

  • Lucy McSweeney, the Children’s Lawyer for Ontario,
  • Christian Whalen, Chair of the CBA National Children’s Law Committee, and
  • Lisa Wolff, UNICEF Canada.

Judge Marion Buller and Judge Rose Raven from the B.C. Provincial Court and Justice Margot Fleming from B.C. Supreme Court) also bring their considerable knowledge and keen interest in justice for children to our access to justice discussions.

Inside the rapid growth of Axess Law

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By David Wiseman:
Here is a link to an article in the current issue of Precedent magazine that I thought might be of interest.  It is a profile of the lawyers behind Axess Law and how they went about setting it up.  For those that don’t know, Axess Law is a new entrant in the legal services market in Ontario that aims to provide affordable services to low and middle income people.  All or most of its offices are in Walmarts (!).
The business model that Axess Law uses is an interesting development in relation to improving access to justice and is receiving some attention in the ongoing consideration of whether to allow ABS in Ontario (an issue that is being considered by law societies across the country).  Interestingly, both sides of that debate like to refer to Axess Law.  Those who support allowing ABS cite Axess Law as an example of exactly what ABS-entities could be expected to do, although on a grander scale.  Those who oppose ABS cite Axess Law as showing that ABS-type innovation in legal services, for low and middle income groups, can occur without actually allowing ABS (and without risking the purported downsides of ABS).  
 

For those interested in the broader debate on ABS, in which the issue of access to justice is figuring quite prominently, I would draw to your attention (I don’t think I have seen it explicitly referred to on this list yet) that  the LSUC ABS Working Group has released a summary of the submissions it received in relation to its Discussion Paper on ABS.  The summary is available here: <http://www.lsuc.on.ca/uploadedFiles/ABS-full-report.pdf>  All of the submissions are available via links on this page:  http://www.lsuc.on.ca/abs/