02 February 2013

CLE Family Law Act Course Coming to Victoria and Kelowna

The Continuing Legal Education Society's two-day course, "The Family Law Act: Everything You Always Wanted to Know But Were Afraid," just ran in Vancouver and is about to be repeated live in Victoria and Kelowna. The program takes an in-depth look at the three areas of the law that will be most changed by the Family Law Act — the division of property and debt, the care of children and family violence — from a practice-oriented perspective, and is taught by leading judges, lawyers and psychologists including:
  • Scott Booth
  • barbara findlay QC
  • Lisa Holmes Wyatt (chair)
  • Anna Laing
  • Georgialee Lang
  • Gordon Kopelow
  • Dr Mary Korpach
  • Morag MacLeod
  • The Honourable Justice Donna Martinson
  • The Honourable Judge Paul Meyers
  • Colin Millar
  • Mary Mouat QC
  • Barbara Nelson QC
  • Karen Nordlinger QC
  • The Honourable Judge Margaret Rae
  • Eugene Raponi QC (chair)
  • The Honourable Judge Meg Shaw
  • Ronald Smith QC
  • Dr Alan Wade
  • Master Barbara Young
The course features two keynote speakers, and wraps up with a Q&A session with two senior members of the Ministry of Justice's Civil Policy and Legislation Office who were intimately involved with the development of the new legislation. The keynote speakers are:
Jerry McHale QC, a former assistant deputy minister in the Ministry of Justice and now the Lam Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Victoria, who speaks about the development and implementation of the Family Law Act on day one. 
Norman Picard QC, a prominent family law lawyer with the Edmonton firm Barr Picard, who talks on day two about the family law reforms implemented in his jurisdiction and what British Columbia lawyers can learn from the Alberta experience with similar legal concepts.
In Victoria, the course runs on 7 and 8 February 2013 at the Hotel Grand Pacific; in Kelowna, the court will be held at the Delta Grand Okanagan on 21 and 22 February 2013. For more information, contact the CLE program lawyer for the course, Nadia Myerthall, at nmyerthall@cle.bc.ca.

For those of you mindful of such things, the course will take care of all of your CPD credits, including the two-hour ethics component, in a single sitting.