Adoption Update

It looks like I've found someone - a group really - who is interested in and well-suited to taking this blog over. I hope to make the transition by the beginning of September at the latest. More news to follow.

Update: 8 July 2016

In the very near future, Collaborative Divorce Vancouver will assume control of this blog. CDV is wonderful group of family law lawyers, family therapists and financial specialists who bring are trained in both collaborative settlement processes and mediation and focus on resolving their clients' legal disputes without going to court. I took my collaborative training in BC and was a member of CDV before I left for Alberta, and I am very pleased to have CDV take over my blog.

CDV has kindly agreed to keep all of my old posts, going back to 2008, live and online, and that all new content they post will be available for all to copy, save, reuse and repurpose on the same Creative Commons non-commercial, share-alike licence I've used for the past several years.

Although I'm giving up this blog, for the reasons I described in my post of 27 March 2016, I'm satisfied that it's in good hands and will continue to provide the same sort of insights and analysis readers are used to. I'll be following this blog after it changes hands, and I'm looking forward to the fantastic new content.

My sincere thanks to CDV and to all of my readers over these last eight years. Without your interest, I would never have kept the blog going as long as I did. Thank you.

 - John-Paul Boyd

Interested in Adopting This Blog?

It's becoming more and more difficult for me to maintain this blog, and I'm looking for a British Columbia family law lawyer who's interested in taking it over. The blog gets between 400 and 600 pageviews per weekday, less on weekends, has 1597 published comments and this is its 383rd post.

Unfortunately, my job at the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family is taking up an increasing amount of my time, and I'm afraid I'm just not able to keep this blog as up to date as I'd like to. I'm doing more writing for organizations like Slaw and LawNow, which is letting me focus on theory, access to justice issues and topical public legal education, but is also robbing me of the time I normally have to write here.

Ideally, you'd write an article or two each month focussing on developments in family law, practice and procedure, commonly misunderstood legal issues and common legal needs and so forth. You'd expect that your posts will be read by the bench and bar -- incidentally, this blog was the first legal blog cited in a Canadian court judgment! -- as well as the public, and that you'll occasionally provoke some controversy with your writing. One of the things that's set this blog apart, I think, has been my interest in taking positions on legal issues, not just passively reporting on them or treating bad options as equal to good options. I'd hope that you'd make recommendations, promote best practices and discourage foolish, self-centred behaviour.

You should also expect to reply to two to three comments a week. Most of the comments this blog receives are spam from spell casters (believe it or not), lawyers (for shame), scammers (hardly a surprise) and the illuminati (or so they say). The rest are a mix of genuine commentary that contributes to the dialogue and questions about readers' personal situations. You can't give legal advice through this blog, of course, but you can give legal information.

You'll also need to expect that your writing will be copied and republished. Use of this blog is subject to a Creative Commons licence that allows readers to save, store, copy, reuse, repurpose and republish its contents as they wish, without the need to obtain my permission, subject only to three restrictions: that they do not copy or republish this material for commercial purposes; that they cite this blog as the source of the material they have used; and, that they publish the material they create with material from this blog available for others to copy and republish on the same terms. It will be condition of my transfer of this blog that you continue to publish on the terms of this licence.

Another condition will be that you keep the primary name of the blog as "JP Boyd on Family Law" in order to maintain consistency with the branding of the wikibook of the same name. You can add whatever you'd like to after that to identify it with yourself or your form.

A final condition will be that all articles published prior to you taking the blog over continue to remain published and that I continue, except for guest posts, to be identified as their author. You can of course add whatever editorial comments you want to make to those posts if you take a different view.... as long as you're clearly identified as the author of those comments!

So... anyone interested? If you'd like to talk, call me at my office at 403-261-0341. Otherwise, send me an email at the address you'll find on www.jpboyd.com.

Guest Column: Amici Curiae Paralegals to Deliver an Innovative Pro Bono Service, Temporary Foreign Worker Divorce Clinic

by Dom Bautista,

Executive Director, Law Courts Centre

The Amici Curiae Pro Bono Paralegal Programme, which is now in its fourth year of operations, is expanding its services to serve Temporary Foreign Workers who need help in preparing their uncontested divorce applications.

The clinic is offering help to TFWs, specifically those who come from countries like the Philippines where divorce is not allowed, who need to complete their application for an uncontested divorce order with the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The clinic also helps TFWs who have children in their native country, and are in the process of applying to include their children, but not their spouse, in their application to become a Canadian Permanent Resident. For TFWs who do not wish to include their spouse in their PR application, Immigration Canada requires proof of separation, such as a divorce order. The objective of the programme is to help draft these forms to meet the legal requirements and guidelines.

The Amici Curiae volunteers are skilled paralegals who have at least two years litigation experience; they have completed their training in preparing uncontested divorce applications in British Columbia.

Innovation

We have adopted private practice service standards, integrated innovative concepts like unbundling legal services, and used technology to deliver what we hope will be a top notch pro bono service. Consider:

Unbundled service. We have streamlined uncontested divorce applications in British Columbia to eight steps. Our clients can engage us in any of the eight steps. Each step will specify what documents need to be prepared and submitted to the court registry. 

Certitude. Our clients will be told how much they should expect to pay and how long each step should take. 

Support. At each session, will have at least one volunteer who speaks Filipino. At the end of each session, the clients will receive a written checklist or instructions. In between service times, they will receive email or text reminders in the language of their choice.

About the Clinic

Each clinic session will have a duty counsel present to review the completed forms. No legal advice will be given at the clinics. Our clinics will be held on Saturdays. Each session is one hour long. Clients can choose either the 2:00 pm or 3:00 pm time slots. Our first clinic will be held on 6 June 2015.

Email address. tfw.divorce@gmail.com 

Reservations number. 778.322.2839 

Location. Justice Education Society of British Columbia, Room 260 at 800 Hornby Street in Vancouver, British Columbia

Amici Curiae's TFW clinic is self-funded, thus our clients will be charged $25 for each session to help cover expenses.

Our TFW clinic is the latest addition to our growing list of services which include the civil and human rights matters.

This is an exciting time for the practice of pro bono work in British Columbia. If you are interested in participating as duty counsel or paralegal, please write me.

About Dom Bautista

Dom C. Bautista is the executive director of Law Courts Center in Vancouver. When not teaching, he tinkers with ways to open access to justice to self-represented litigants in BC. Follow Dom on Twitter at @lccdombautista.

Pro Bono Survey

Canadian Lawyer magazine is conducting a national survey of lawyers' pro bono work. The survey is aimed at individual lawyers rather than law firms.

If you are a lawyer, please take the time to fill the survey out, whether you do pro bono work or not.

Salvation Army Pro Bono Program Shut Down

I am very sorry to report that the Salvation Army's pro bono legal advice program has shut down. Although I understand that self-sufficient regional clinics may be maintained, the clinics run out of the program's central Vancouver office at Belkin House, such as the clinics at the Robson Square Provincial Court registry and the Caring Place in Maple Ridge, are terminated effective immediately. This is a really disappointing development; the program was run very efficiently and served thousands of people, and I've been volunteering with the program since 2002.

This would seem to leave Access Pro Bono as the last independent provider of full-service legal clinics in the province. (Help can also be had from the UVic and UBC legal advice programs, and from the countless community-based programs run by organizations like the Battered Women's Support Services and the YWCA.) Lawyers volunteering with the Salvation Army program should sign up with Access Pro Bono's summary legal advice program as soon as possible.

Access Pro Bono Drop-In Legal Advice Events

Access Pro Bono's annual open-air legal advice event is running today in Vancouver from 10:00am to 5:00pm at Victory Square Park, at 200 West Hastings Street. The free event is intended to facilitate access to justice for low- and modest-income people, including the homeless, on all legal issues and to raise money to support the organization's programs through pledges raised by the volunteer lawyers.

The even repeats in New Westminster from 10:00am to 2:00pm on 11 September 2012 at Hyack Square, in Kelowna from 10:00am to 2:00pm on 14 September 2012 in the City Park, and in Victoria from 10:00am to 2:00pm on 18 September 2012 at Centennial Square.

Access Pro Bono raised over $50,000 for pro bono programming in British Columbia last year, and hopes to raise $60,000 this year. For more information visit the event website.

Access Pro Bono Launches New Website

Access Pro Bono, the organization formed in 2010 by the merger of the Western Canada Society to Access Justice and Pro Bono Law of British Columbia, has just launched a fantastic new website at www.accessprobono.ca, thanks to funding from the Legal Services Society, the agency which provides legal aid in British Columbia. The new site is very user-friendly and easy to navigate.

According to the executive director, Jamie Maclaren, Access Pro Bono

"...made a conscious decision to focus the new site on the pro bono legal services that we offer to low-income British Columbians and how to access them, rather than the ins and outs of our organization...

"Today's launched version of the site is Phase 1 of our ongoing web development project. We will be adding more dynamic elements and more resources to the site in subsequent phases, including CLE-TV programs for pro bono lawyers, greater integration with Clicklaw, more BC-based legal resources, more videos introducing our many programs and projects, and better web-based access to our services."

The new site is quite sharp and worth a visit.

Law Week Wraps Up Saturday With Free Legal Advice

Law Week, the Canadian Bar Association's annual celebration of the signing of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, wraps up on Saturday 16 April 2011 with Dial-a-Lawyer Day. Call between 10am and 2pm to speak to a lawyer for free legal advice at the following numbers:

• Family Law: 1-855-326-4529
• Employment and Labour Law: 1-855-367-5529
• General Law (English language): 604-687-3221 or 1-800-663-1919
• General Law (Chinese language): 604-687-3404 or 1-888-687-3404

I'll be one of the lawyers on the line; feel free to call and say hi.

Access Pro Bono Launches Court Form Service

Access Pro Bono, the organization created by the merger of Pro Bono Law British Columbia and the Access Justice Society, has announced a new Paralegal Program under which paralegals supervised by a lawyer will give low-income Supreme Court litigants help drafting court documents. The program, sadly, is only for non-family law civil matters; less extensive help for family law cases can still be had from the self-help centre.

This is how the new service works:

• Each paralegal program will engage the volunteer services of two to four paralegals and one supervising lawyer
• The Law Courts Center will recruit, monitor and train the volunteer paralegals as needed and Access Pro Bono will recruit supervising lawyers as needed
• The supervising lawyer will directly supervise each client file at the Vancouver Justice Access Centre
  
• The supervising lawyer will be responsible for the legal advice and assistance provided by the paralegals
• Volunteer paralegals will each see a maximum of two clients per clinic and the program will serve a maximum of eight clients per day
  

If you are interested in this service, call 604-660-2084, or go in person to the Vancouver Justice Access Centre at 290-800 Hornby Street in Vancouver and ask to be booked into the Paralegal Program.

Canada's Chief Justice Comments on Access to Justice

Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin, a former luminary of the British Columbia bench and Canada's top judge since 2000, has made some important remarks about the accessibility of the justice system at a University of Toronto legal conference which have been loudly reported by the Globe and Mail and CBC.

Her Ladyship's comments were focused on the high cost of legal services, the inadequacy of legal aid services, and the monopoly lawyers have over the practice law. To quote from Kirk Makin's excellent article in the Globe:

“Do we have adequate access to justice?” she asked a University of Toronto conference on the problem. “It seems to me that the answer is no. We have wonderful justice for corporations and for the wealthy. But the middle class and the poor may not be able to access our justice system.”

These problems are particularly acute for middle- and low-income earners involved in family law proceedings in British Columbia. Middle-income families often wind up sacrificing the family home on lawyer's fees if a settlement cannot be reached in relatively short order. Low-income families often don't have the luxury of hiring counsel at all, and given the state of the cutbacks to legal aid imposed by Gordon Campbell's government in 2002, legal aid for family law problems is available only in emergency circumstances and for a limited retainer.

I agree with the Chief Justice's comments, but I'm not sure what can be done to correct the problem.

For low-income families, it seems imperative that full funding be restored to the Legal Services Society, but that's only a starting point and requires a very significant, if not prohibitive, budgetary commitment on the part of the provincial government.

For low- and middle-income families, I think we need to focus on two things. First, we need to have the basics of family law and family responsibilities taught in high school so that people enter the legal process from an informed position at least vaguely aware of their rights and duties as parents, spouses and litigants. Second, we need to move from the presumption enshrined in the Divorce Act and the Family Relations Act that court is the default setting for dispute resolution. Negotiation, mediation and collaborative law are generally faster and cheaper means of resolving family law disputes, and are arguably more effective in the long run; they should be where we turn first to find a resolution, and court should be reserved for emergencies, irresolvable disputes, cases involving abduction and threats, and cases involving domestic violence.

It goes without saying that more lawyers need to spend more time on pro bono clients. This however is a matter of individual choice and availability, and not an adequate reply to a problem which is fundamentally systemic.

Pro Bono Law BC Expands Services

Pro Bono Law British Columbia has just announced an expansion of its services with the introduction of the Wills & Estates Roster Program. The new roster is a welcome addition to PBLBC's other programs, such as the Family Law Roster Program and the Court of Appeal Roster Program.

PBLBC is a non-profit organization funded by the Law Society, the Law Foundation and other groups. It operates as a referral destination from clinic-based services like UBC's Law Students' Legal Advice Program, the Salvation Army's Pro Bono Program and the Access Justice Society, and tries to link people in need of legal services with the roster lawyers volunteering to offer it.