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Full-Text Articles in Law
Bend Or Break: Enhancing The Responsibilities Of Law Societies To Promote Access To Justice, Richard Devlin Frsc
Bend Or Break: Enhancing The Responsibilities Of Law Societies To Promote Access To Justice, Richard Devlin Frsc
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
There now appears to be a consensus in Canada that we have a serious access to justice problem. Chief Justices have been vocal. The Governor-General has made an intervention. Legal newspapers and websites have weekly, if not daily, stories on access to justice concerns. There have been several thorough reports which both detail the problems and propose possible paths forward. And one CEO of a national law firm has lamented that “access to justice is the legal profession’s equivalent of global warming.”
However, in my opinion, despite all this alarm, attention, and progress, two key components tend to be missing …
No Lawyer For A Hundred Miles? Mapping The New Geography Of Access Of Justice In Canada, Jamie Baxter, Albert Yoon
No Lawyer For A Hundred Miles? Mapping The New Geography Of Access Of Justice In Canada, Jamie Baxter, Albert Yoon
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Abstract
Recent concerns about the geography of access to justice in Canada have focused on the dwindling number of lawyers in rural and remote areas, raising anxieties about the profession’s inability to meet current and future demands for localized legal services. These concerns have motivated a range of policy responses that aim to improve the education, training, recruitment and retention of practitioners in underserved areas. We surveyed lawyers across Ontario to better understand their physical proximity to clients and how, if at all, that proximity promotes access to justice. We find that lawyers’ scope of practice varies based on a …
Access To Justice And The Ethics And Politics Of Alternative Business Structures, Richard Devlin, Ora Morison
Access To Justice And The Ethics And Politics Of Alternative Business Structures, Richard Devlin, Ora Morison
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
Despite ongoing concern about access to justice in Canada, the problem persists. Meanwhile, the basic model for legal practice in Canada is the same as when the profession first emerged centuries ago in England. Only lawyers can own and control legal practices. This is not the case in other common law jurisdictions where rules have evolved to allow nonlawyers to own the companies that provide legal services. Based on a comparative analysis of the development of these alternative business structures (ABSs) in Australia and the United Kingdom, and the nondevelopment of ABSs in the United States, the authors argue that …