Last spring, the Winnipeg and Manitoba universities mingled inspiration, hard work, and solid planning to create a legal help centre. Almost exactly one year later, this dream is now planted, quite solidly, in the reality of the University of Winnipeg’s campus. Located on Spence Street, the Legal Help Centre offers seminars and legal advice for the people in their community.

I always find it interesting to listen to the discussion around public policy issues. How the discussion is argued in terms of values — the good and the bad and how people are characterized as worthy and unworthy — all to prove a point. My husband’s family, an eccentric group of science types — imagine a British version of the TV show The Big Bang Theory — labels these discussions “arguments sans facts.”

Legal aid is a problem child. It doesn’t matter which province you’re in or what type of law you practise, if legal aid is part of your legal business, it’s not easy. The system is straining at the seams, some might even say it’s broken beyond repair (See our cover story on page 28). And there are no shortage of reports and studies over the last decades that have suggested ways to fix it. Mostly, those recommendations are collecting dust on the shelves of attorneys general’s offices across this fine country. According to the Canadian Bar Association’s report on legal aid released in July, “Despite lobbying and litigation efforts, there have been no significant systemic improvements in access to justice in Canada during the last four decades.”

Jordan Weisz is the kind of lawyer who has kept Canada’s legal aid system afloat for the past two decades. About 80 per cent of the clients who come to his doors each year have a legal aid certificate in hand. Yet they represent less than half of his revenue. As a senior practitioner, he qualifies for Legal Aid Ontario’s top tariff rate of $106.90 per hour. But LAO is forced to make do with a fixed amount of funding each year regardless of demand for services. To cover the shortfall, it restricts the number of hours for which lawyers are compensated, regardless of what may be required for a proper defence.

 

Julia Negrea waited four months for the judge’s decision. Waiting that long had, perhaps, dulled the excitement of potentially winning her first court case, but as the decision was read, Negrea knew she had won. 

 

The aphorism “Where you stand is where you sit” means that one’s philosophy and opinions are necessarily shaped by one’s job or profession, which fits well within the ongoing debate over the proper role of lawyers in the adversarial system.

 

Editor Gail Cohen discusses the Ontario legal aid boycott and other highlights from the February issue of Canadian Lawyer magazine. click here to view video

Chad Skinner

The life of a typical Bay Street articling student isn’t an exciting prospect for everyone. Imagine this instead: After waking up, you head down to the local airstrip, where you’re joined by the rest of the court party — including the judge who will be presiding over your case later in the day.