In 2011-2012, more than 300 PBSC law students from U of T and Osgoode donated a staggering total of 25,000 hours of free legal services to help organizations and vulnerable communities in need in Toronto. The contributions made by the two Toronto schools account for almost a fifth of PBSC’s activities across the country.

To celebrate these accomplishments, on Friday, March 2 more than 100 PBSC students, lawyer supervisors and organization partners gathered at the downtown offices of PBSC’s national law firm partner, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, for a wonderful evening of food, wine and good conversation.

Gail Wong, director of student programs at McCarthy Tétrault, opened the event by welcoming the audience on behalf of the firm. The law student coordinators who run the U of T and Osgoode chapters then described some of the exciting and innovative projects PBSC developed this year. They thanked the volunteers and partners for their efforts, and acknowledged McCarthy Tétrault for its ongoing support of PBSC’s programs from coast to coast, as well as PBSC’s principal funder, the Law Foundation of Ontario, and its national legal research partner, Carswell (WestlawCanada).

The highlight of the evening was a panel discussion moderated by PBSC’s national director, Nikki Gershbain, where leading pro bono lawyers and community advocates provided the students with concrete suggestions for how they could incorporate pro bono work into their legal practices. The speakers were Abby Deshman, director of the public safety program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Matt Kelleher, a partner at McCarthy Tétrault and member of the firm’s pro bono committee, Wendy Komiotis, executive director of the Metropolitan Education and Action Committee to End Violence Against Women (METRAC), and Andrew Matheson, a partner at McCarthy Tétrault with an active pro bono practice who, while working as a litigator in the United States, acted for a number of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The presenters spoke about their own varied pro bono and public interest contributions, and reflected on the impact made by the students through their work with PBSC. The speakers encouraged the students to continue to make pro bono a regular part of their legal practices upon graduation. As Andrew Matheson noted: “If the principle ‘equality before the law’ is going to be anything but an empty phrase, it can’t be equality before the law only for those who can afford it.” Abby Deshman explained that the CCLA could simply not function without the support of pro bono lawyers in private practice. She noted that of the more than 100 cases the CCLA has intervened in, every single one of them relied on pro bono counsel from the private bar.

The event ended with a cocktail reception where students, lawyers and community partners mingled well into the evening, enjoying panoramic views of the city from the firm’s 53rd floor offices. Students left the event inspired to hear stories about the impact of pro bono work on their communities and the profession, and with new ideas to translate the skill acquired through PBSC into their future careers.

Click here to see a photogallery of the event.

Under the supervision of leading academics and lawyers from Toronto and internationally, PBSC law students from the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School are conducting research into the ways in which LGBT and human rights groups are organizing to resist this criminalization, and looking at the implications for human rights policy formation, social services, and immigration and refugee policies internationally.  The International Human Rights Program (IHRP) at the University of Toronto is also a partner on this important project.

On Thursday, March 1, 2012 from 12:30-2:00, the LGBT student group at the U of T Faculty of Law, Out in Law, along with PBSC and the IHRP, are hosting a panel that will review and explore the project’s research and findings to date.  Speakers include Douglas Elliott, one of Canada’s leading human rights lawyers; Adrian Jjuuko, Executive Director of the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum in Uganda and the plaintiff in the equality case Jjuuko Adrian v. Attorney General of Uganda; Professor Nancy Nichol, an award-winning video artist and documentary filmmaker; and Maurice Tomlinson, the Legal Advisor for Aids-Free World, an HIV advocacy organization in Jamaica.

Space is limited.  If you are interested in attending this event, please email robert.hares@utoronto.ca

Back row: Steeves Bujold (McCarthy Tétrault), Kim Stanton (PBSC National), Nathalie Des Rosiers (CCLA), Léna Taylor (McCarthy Tétrault), Martin Gallié (PBSC On-site Supervisor, UQAM), Audrey-Paule Ledoux (PBSC UQAM), Frédéric Grenon-Assal (Sherbrooke); Front row: Émilie Deschênes (PBSC Laval); Amanda Gibeault (PBSC McGill), Leslie Ning (PBSC National), Nikki Gershbain (PBSC National), Marie-France Comtois and Zahra Abbas (PBSC UdeM), Elyse Pépin-Laporte (PBSC UQAM)

PBSC’s incredible Montréal Program Coordinators kicked things off and welcomed the audience.  Next up we heard from Steeves Bujold, member of McCarthy Tétrault’s Pro Bono Committee and a Board Member at Pro Bono Québec, who praised the volunteers present for their pro bono contributions, and provided concrete suggestions for students interested in working at a law firm that encourages pro bono activities.  McCarthy Tétrault lawyer Simon Chamberland echoed these remarks, adding that pro bono activity is not only good for the firm, but an obligation of every lawyer as a member of the legal profession.  He then spoke to the students about his own work with the CCLA on the Kazemi case, about Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi who died in Iranian custody.  PBSC National Francophone Coordinator Leslie Ning had the honour of introducing Nathalie Des Rosiers, and spoke about the longstanding partnership between PBSC and the CCLA and our important work on the Rights Watch Blog.  Ms. Des Rosiers presented a lively and riveting speech about our unique responsibility as lawyers to protect civil liberties, including by speaking “to the powerful, the powerless and the indifferent”.  PBSC’s Program Manager, Kim Stanton, closed the event by thanking the audience and the speakers, and particularly our Program Coordinators for their dedication, McCarthy Tétrault for hosting the evening, and for their ongoing support of PBSC’s program from coast to coast.

A cocktail reception followed, at which students and speakers mingled well into the evening. PBSC students left the event encouraged and inspired by Ms. DesRosier’s eloquent message and practical examples of the many and varied ways in which legal training can contribute to increasing access to justice in Canada.

From Left to Right: Denise Cooney (student); Timothy Fitzsimmons (FMC); Doug Stewart (FMC); Shannon McDunnough (student); Angelo Gentile (FMC); David Spiro (FMC); Nikki Gershbain (PBSC); Shaira Nanji (student); Jared Mackey (student); Richard Li (student); Evelyn Dormer (student)

Link to the FMC Law page of the Tax Court of Canada Project, in partnership with PBSC

Mock trial raises awareness about the legal system

Ten law students from the University of Calgary are working in partnership with Pro Bono Students Canada to deliver law lessons to the grade five and six students in Calgary elementary schools.

The U of C law students and the coordinators of pbsc are reaching out to at-risk neighbourhoods where the youth are more likely to interact with the justice system.

The five lessons are taught in one week, and the concluding mock trials are part of an educational project initiated by the Ontario Justice Education Network and implemented by pbsc. It aims to raise awareness about the Canadian legal system in the Calgary youth community.

“This project gives the students some indication of what the law is, so later on in life, if they have some interactions with the legal system, they will have some elementary vocabulary to deal with in a much more confident fashion,” said Faculty of Law representative Waqas Iqbal. “Before you get access to justice and before being concerned with things such as the affordability of legal services, you have to know what justice is.”

The pbsc coordinator for the U of C chapter, Alex Boissonneau-Lehner, added “With the grade fives and sixes, we have their attention. It is important to ingrain the law as early as possible. We also want to try to create a positive impression of the law to students.”

The project’s rationale is aligned with pbsc’s theme of educating citizens about their rights, legal protections and proceedings. Such knowledge provides a more accurate understanding of the justice system instead of relying on the media’s limited and often incorrect portrayal of the law.

Boissonneau-Lehner has confirmed a grade six class in St. Peter’s Elementary School is participating in the educational project that will commence at the end of January. He and his pbsc team are currently looking to find one more elementary school to conduct this law initiative.

Several lawyers from McCarthy Tetrault, a Canadian law firm, will be assisting the university volunteers with the delivery of the 150-page lesson plan.

To integrate some fun into this educational initiative, a mock trial involving the fairy-tale characters Hansel, Gretel and the Witch will take place from early to mid-February. In the role-playing scenario, Hansel and Gretel post the story of the Witch’s plotting and attempted murder of them on the internet. As a result, the Witch’s gingerbread business has suffered severely. The Witch then sues the children for defamation, alleging their story to be a complete fabrication.

“[Hansel and Gretel] is something children can relate to. The very concept of defamation concerns spreading lies about other people. Kids in grade schools are susceptible to that, especially with the pressures of popularity and conformity. If you engage students with issues that are very relevant to them, while putting a legal veneer over it, it accomplishes a number of objectives: getting them to understand the law and the social harms that would result from bad behaviour,” explained Iqbal.

In the mock trial, the grade five and six students will adopt the roles of judges, lawyers and witnesses, applying what they have learned in the five law lessons prior to the trial.

Boissonneau-Lehner commented that changes have been made from last year’s educational project. Previously, the students embarked on a field trip to the McCarthy Tetrault offices and the Calgary Court Centre, where they attended a Q&A session led by three judges from the Court of Queen’s Bench. Now, the grade six students from St. Peter’s can look forward to a special opportunity to attend the Hansel and Gretel mock trial in an actual courtroom setting.

“We are hoping to get the judges from the Court of Queen’s Bench to preside over the mock trial,” said Boissonneau-Lehner. “This, of course, is contingent to the court and lawyers’ schedules.”

Additionally, the Alberta Law Foundation has provided pbsc with an operating grant that funds this initiative. The grant covers transportation costs. The McCarthy Tetrault law firm offered supplementary funding for the students’ free pizza lunch.

However, the biggest expense of this project is the used and efforts channelled by the U of C volunteers and the McCarthy Tetrault lawyers.

“Time has been donated to help this very important initiative. If you value the amount of time all of those lawyers and judges put in, it would amount to tens of thousands of dollars,” said Iqbal. “At the end of the day, what we want is not to give them a show but rather to give them the tools to actively participate in this very interesting and fun exercise.”

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Thanks to volunteers from Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC), including third-year civil law student Patricia Atallah, teenagers from the National Capital Region are getting a taste of what it’s like to practise law, from researching and preparing a case to arguing it in court.

Patricia and three of her colleagues in the law program will serve as monitors for a moot court competition organized by the Clinique juridique Juripop, a non-profit legal-aid clinic. The competition will see two high-school teams of about 10 students (from Polyvalente de l’Érablière and Polyvalente Nicolas-Gatineau) argue opposite sides of a case heard by the Supreme Court. “We really want this come across as the actual case,” says Patricia. “So we’ll have people playing regular witnesses, expert witnesses, lawyers and, of course, those accused.”

The four uOttawa students, who’ve been split between the two teams representing their respective high school, are responsible for teaching the 16- and 17-year-olds how to argue a criminal-law case. “It’s interesting because I’ll be passing along what I’ve learned in the classroom and during my internships to the students in the competition,” adds Patricia, who’s determined to see her team win the case. “I’m very lucky to have been chosen to work with them.”

A Court of Quebec judge will use criteria like grammatical proficiency, quality of the written submission and speaking skills to determine the winners, who then go on to represent the region in the national final.

The University of Ottawa has been affiliated for more than 10 years now with Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC), whose aim is to offer legal aid to persons who don’t have the financial means to access such services. The volunteer students are matched with community organizations or with legal professionals and give an average of three hours a week to provide “access to justice to underrepresented and disadvantaged individuals, groups and organizations.”

“I decided to sign up because I think it’s terrible that certain people can’t get access to legal services,” explains Patricia. “I find it incredible to be able to help by sharing the knowledge I’ve gained, so I said to myself, ‘Why not?’.”

Patricia in fact encourages all students to join PBSC. “It’s a good way not only to get experience through research or through our contact with people, but also to make a difference in the community,” says the volunteer, whose goal is to one day practise business law. “Volunteering is always a good thing, and most lawyers do.”

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PBSC-UBC

David Eby

The UBC launch event was held on a sunny Friday afternoon in early September.  The chapter served lunch to 180 law students while keynote speaker David Eby, Executive Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, spoke about controversial legal issues in Vancouver, such as Insite and the Polygamy Reference. He encouraged the students to participate in initiatives and projects through PBSC, asserting that BCCLA had highly benefited from the work of students in the past.  In addition to his day job at the BCCLA, David is President of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Legal Affairs columnist for 24 Hours newspaper in Vancouver, a recent NDP candidate in the Vancouver-Point Grey riding, and an avid guitarist and vocalist.  To listen to some tracks from David’s four-piece band Ladner, named after a Vancouver suburb, click here to visit the page.

PBSC-U of T

Cynthia Petersen

PBSC-U of T held their launch event on the back lawn of the Faculty, where they hosted a lunch for 200 first year students. Guest speaker Cynthia Petersen is a constitutional lawyer who has litigated almost all of the LGBT rights cases decided by the Supreme Court of Canada over the past two decades.  Cynthia emphasized the many benefits that have come from her own pro bono practice, including the personal gratification that she has experienced working on important social justice causes.   She noted that test case litigation, by definition, requires novel legal arguments and therefore necessitates intellectual creativity, imagination and rigour.  The cases usually involve collaborative efforts by numerous lawyers and she spoke about the professional advantages of working with talented counsel from across the country.  For those students who have chosen to study law with a view to securing an occupation that provides financial security, she mentioned the reputational benefits of working on high-profile cases, and the possibility of attracting paying clients from one’s pro bono work.

PBSC-McGill

This year, a strike by some McGill University staff left many students not wanting to cross a picket line, and so PBSC-McGill moved their launch event to the St. James United Church – which also quite fittingly happens to a hub for social activism in Montréal.  The chapter welcomed 50 law students and three guest speakers for a riveting panel discussion on the importance of pro bono.  Janet Dench, the Executive Director for the Canadian Council for Refugees, relayed the many ways PBSC students have assisted the CCR in the past, and remarked on the way in which PBSC has helped to create a generation of law students committed to the public interest.  Walter Tom, Coordinator of the Concordia Student Union Legal Information Clinic, highlighted the ways in which his experiences as a lawyer of colour and an immigrant have impacted his lawyering, and encouraged the students to use the law as a tool to actively help the community.

Roderick Macdonald

Professor Roderick A. Macdonald left each and every student in the room in a state of personal reflection, after a speech that asked three foundational questions: “Who am I? Who do I aspire to become? How do I become the “I” of my hopes?” Professor Macdonald explained to the students: “Volunteering through Pro Bono Students Canada means doing “human rights” in your own back yard. It is the occasion to learn the ethic of professional responsibility in a context of discovery, of support, of engagement.  It is a point of comfort and stability in an environment characterized by uncertainty, instability, frustration and occasional hostile acting-out. And it is also a refuge from the careerism (and occasional cynicism) that surrounds all of us in the law Faculty.”

As he does each year, Professor Macdonald surprised his audience of mostly first year students by taking out his guitar and performing his closing remarks through a song by the famous American folk singer Phil Ochs, “Où va la chance – There but for fortune.”  Professor Macdonald sang:

“Show me a field hand, a bunkhouse uncleaned,
Back ache and heart break, for family few dreams,
And I’ll show you a migrant, with so many reasons why,
There but for fortune, may go you or I… you or I.”

Check out this complete list of PBSC’s 2011 launch events.