The Every Lawyer

To quote Patricia Blocksom: “Equality is a robust concept but a fragile reality.” Fortunately lawyers are good at remaining constantly vigilant and feminism is nothing to be afraid of, quite the opposite: by the end of this our second episode on the Touchstones Report, you will be very grateful you have chosen to let these wonderful women, these wonderful feminists, into your life for a while. Thanks for listening, reach out to us anytime at [email protected]!

Touchstones Report Executive Summary:

The CBA’s Task Force on Gender Equality’s groundbreaking 1993 Report titled “Touchstones for Change: Equality, Diversity, and Accountability” addresses a range of issues related to equality and discrimination in the legal profession. It focuses on barriers to entry into the profession, including law school admission policies, access to articling positions, and the articling experience. The Report also highlights the unique challenges faced by women in the legal profession, such as employment opportunities, career advancement, and the lack of accommodation for family responsibilities.

Additionally, the Report explores the dynamics within private practice, government legal departments, and corporate legal departments, including issues of employment equality, career opportunities, and instances of sexual harassment. Further, the Report delves into the challenges faced by faculties of law and administrative tribunals, examining issues such as representation, career advancement, balancing career and family responsibilities, and sexual harassment. It also addresses the judiciary and the need for a fair and diverse appointment process, judicial education, and tackling discrimination within the judiciary.

The practice of family law is discussed in detail, highlighting issues related to representation, career advancement, funding for legal aid, and challenges with the substantive law.

The Report also emphasizes the role of Law Societies and the CBA in promoting equality within the legal profession. It explores the need for non-discrimination, monitoring, disclosure requirements, alternative discipline processes, and the importance of implementing the Task Force’s recommendations. Finally, it touches upon the need for gender equality in substantive law and procedure, examining areas such as family law, intellectual property law, criminal justice, and pensions and benefits.

Overall, the Touchstones for Change Report provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges and areas requiring improvement in achieving equality and addressing discrimination within the legal profession in Canada. Reviewing the Summary below, one will see that many of these recommendations have been achieved; however, there is still much to be done to make them all a reality.

Summary of Recommendations

Chapter Two addresses barriers to entry into the legal profession and recommends a range of measures, including consultation mechanisms between law schools and law societies, outreach programs to promote diversity in the profession, education equity initiatives, affirmative action recruitment in law schools, admissions policy improvements, support for part-time studies, child care services on campus, increased funding for scholarships, gender-inclusive language and sensitivity in classrooms, curriculum reforms, potential Indigenous law school, appointment of Equity Officers and establishment of safe spaces in law schools, combating harassment and bias, and inclusion of gender-related courses in the Bar Admission program.

Chapter Five addresses issues within law firm and recommends adopting interview guidelines, implementing employment equity programs, monitoring hiring processes, tracking internal referrals to detect systemic discrimination, supporting female lawyers facing client discrimination, banning sexist activities in client promotion, reviewing promotion practices, establishing mentoring programs for women lawyers, evaluating partnership decision-making processes to eliminate bias, reporting demographic information and retention rates to law societies, establishing parental leave policies, offering child care support, implementing policies to address sexual harassment, promoting workplace equity, conducting educational initiatives and collaborating with relevant organizations to implement and finance these initiatives.

In Chapter Six, the Task Force presents recommendations to address gender equality issues within Government Legal Departments, including ensuring fair allocation of work and gender balance on committees, ensuring representation of minority women in the public service and gender equality in management and promotion processes, endorsing membership in professional associations, reviewing recruitment procedures, providing mechanisms for reviewing discretionary decisions related to family responsibilities, accommodating family responsibiliti...

“Legislative Reconciliation is Governments using legislative powers for good and not bad. The Indian Act, you might say, was the government using its powers for bad, for a very long time.” -Prof. Metallic

Professor Naiomi Metallic, divides her time between practice and teaching at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law where she holds the Chancellor’s Chair in Aboriginal Law and Policy. She was part of the legal team that intervened on behalf of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society led by Cindy Blackstock, a longtime advocate for child welfare and Indigenous children’s rights. The SCC referenced Prof. Metallic’s article, Aboriginal Rights, Legislative Reconciliation and Constitutionalism (dal.ca) , in their Reference re An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families, and she is this year’s winner of the CBA’s Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Law.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Supreme Court of Canada - SCC Case Information - Summary - 40619 (scc-csc.ca)

Judicial Workbook on Bill C-92 — An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families (dal.ca)

Supreme Court of Canada - SCC Case Information - Parties - 39856 (scc-csc.ca)

Braiding Legal Orders | McGill-Queen’s University Press (mqup.ca)

We highly recommend The Path:

Canadian Bar Association - Understanding the Truth and Engaging in Reconciliation (cba.org)

Reach out to us anytime at [email protected]

Criminal defense attorneys Tony Paisana and Tyler Schnare from the CBA Criminal Justice Section geek out with Julia about the recently updated CBA Collateral Consequences Toolkit. For clients, it presents a comprehensive overview in fairly plain language about the fall-out of a criminal conviction. For lawyers, to quote Tony, "there are serious consequences to not advising of the consequences...".

This updated resource aims to help lawyers, clients, and judges gain a better understanding of the impact of criminal convictions on offenders before the courts.

The consequences can have an impact on everything from employment to housing, from family to financial considerations, from immigration to pardons.

Collateral consequences have the power to affect an individual – forever.

Canadian Bar Association - Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions: Considerations for lawyers (cba.org)

Julia welcomes Sania Chaudhry, an employment and human rights lawyer and winner of Alberta’s Top 30 under 30 award for professional excellence in 2022, to discuss mental health in the legal profession.

Sania is active with the Alberta Branch of the CBA, as well the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers, and the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association. Julia talks to her about bouncing back from burn-out, going from litigation in private practice to a regulator and back again, learning to cope with microaggressions and stigma on multiple fronts, and starting a family, all before turning 30.

This conversation features an impressive density of tips, tricks, and hands-on advice for young legal professionals and their employers on sustainable lawyering.

EN_Preliminary report_Cadieux et al_Université de Sherbrooke_221024.pdf (flsc.ca)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-legal-profession-needs-to-act-on-barriers-facing-historically/

https://nationalmagazine.ca/fr-ca/articles/the-practice/legal-education/2021/moving-beyond-diversity-and-inclusion

https://www.nationalmagazine.ca/en-ca/articles/the-practice/legal-education/2020/anti-racism-as-part-of-continuing-professional-dev

Trauma informed lawyering and bystander training:

https://www.myrnamccallum.co/

https://standupteams.ca/

CBA National EDI recording series:

Achieving Racial Justice:

https://www.cbapd.org/details_en.aspx?id=na_NA22EDI01A

Indigenous Lawyers Panel:

https://www.cbapd.org/details_en.aspx?id=na_NA...

Overarching themes: lawyers can benefit from multi-disciplinary approaches in various ways, clients seriously benefit from holistic approaches, and that combining these two approaches is really making headway on improving access to justice for vulnerable communities.

Hosted by Julia Tétrault-Provencher and featuring:

Emily Murray Luke’s Place, legal office with social and health support workers on site, specialised on the needs of survivors of intimate partner violence. People centered approach.

Amy Slotek on her work as an embedded lawyer at a downtown Toronto mental health agency working with the homeless. Picking people up where they are.

Michele Leering on Community Lawyers, Outreach, A2J in legal education and reflective practice.

Ida Bianchi on how lack of access to all types of services, not only legal, often causes and then perpetuates people’s involvement with criminal and family justice systems.

Ab Currie on the uneven but steady march of progress on improving access to justice, the interplay between legal and non-legal problems, how these tend to cluster and feed off of one another, and that the legal profession is finally coming to realise more fully that you simply can’t solve one without solving the other.

Lisa Moore on Crossing Boundaries: Exploring Multi-Disciplinary Models for Legal Problem Resolution (2024). Lisa was the lead researcher and author and is also the director of the CFCJ.

Home - Luke's Place (lukesplace.ca)

Embedded Lawyer Program: 2022-23 annual report (legalaid.on.ca)

Home - CALC (communitylegalcentre.ca)

Michele Leering | Queen's Law (queensu.ca)

JUST13_Bio_Currie.pdf (cba.org)

Crossing boundaries: Exploring multi-disciplinary models for legal problem resolution (cfcj-fcjc.org)