Quebec bar’s launch of student legal clinic ‘additional resource for the community’: co-ordinator

Law360 Canada (September 9, 2022, 3:22 PM EDT) -- A legal clinic that will shortly be launched by the Quebec bar is a “bold and healthy” illustration of the role that law societies can play in advancing access to justice while laying the groundwork for graduate law students to get hands-on experience, assert legal experts. 

The new pilot project, expected to open its doors in mid-October in Montreal, will offer free legal services to Quebecers ineligible for legal aid and unable to afford legal services, manned by some 100 students at the École du Barreau under the supervision of about 40 lawyers. The initiative, part of an overall effort to refashion the Bar School’s program, will include up to two 50-minute in-person and virtual consultations.

The Quebec bar ambitiously plans to make the project permanent and extend it to Quebec City, Sherbrooke and Gatineau in the fall of 2023, with 1,400 students taking part, supervised by 200 lawyers, who will serve up to 6,000 clients per year. As of next year, it will be compulsory for all École du Barreau students to take part in the legal clinic, which will offer legal information, advice and assistance in drafting legal documents and preparing for hearings in the fields of social administrative law, civil law, family law, inheritance law and housing law.

“Access to justice is an important concern, so it’s a way of catering to a clientele who might not think of meeting with a lawyer because they can’t afford it or may think that their legal issue is not important enough,” explained Catherine Claveau, head of the Barreau du Québec.

At a time when other law societies across the country appear to be reducing the role they play in graduate law students for the profession, the Quebec bar should be lauded for undertaking a “bold” initiative, noted Robert Leckey, dean of the McGill University Faculty of Law. “In our ecosystem, university law schools have a foundational role, but it strikes me as fully healthy that the profession takes responsibility for a significant part of preparing people for practice,” remarked Leckey. “It’s a bold plan, and it’s positive to see them experimenting, to see them trying something new.”

University-run student legal clinics have embraced the initiative as it is expected to help pare down long waiting lists for the legal services they offer, said Déborah Montambault-Trudelle, co-ordinator of Université Sherbrooke’s four legal student clinics. Outlying regions like the Eastern Townships have scarce affordable or free legal service resources, with the result that one of the university’s clinics — La Clé de vos droits (The Key to Your Rights) — is overwhelmed by demand even though students offer only legal information and not legal advice, added Montambault-Trudelle. “This initiative will be an additional resource for the community that will complement the services that we offer,” said Montambault-Trudelle. But it’s also an undertaking that has perked the interest of law students, added Montambault-Trudelle, who is now expecting more students to partake in the university’s legal clinics “because they want to be prepared” when they go to l’École du Barreau.

The initiative is inextricably linked to an overhaul of the Quebec Bar’s School program, which will take into effect in the 2023-2024 school year, said Claveau. The new program will be based on experiential learning to enable students develop their professional skills in a tangible way through real cases, with student empowerment and autonomy at its heart. The program will consist of three modules, with the first one focused on ethics and professional practice as well causal theory and writing. The second module will last 14 weeks, and will centre around experiential learning in the legal clinic where they will learn about consulting, writing, research, case studies, observation and advocacy. And the third section involves articling in a work setting.

“There is a second objective, one shared by all our members, behind the pilot project,” said Claveau. “There is a great added value for students to arrive in an internship or on the job market after having gone through a concrete client experience like this. Learning how to manage a file, conduct an interview, tailoring research to real cases — learning these competences while at the Bar School is very appreciated by ours members.”

Leckey, however, hopes that the Quebec Bar School will take into account that holders of law degrees and members of the bar work in disparate settings, and that they do not need or use the same skills in their daily professional lives.

“One of the things that strikes me in interactions with law societies in the common law provinces is that I think at times they struggle to grasp how varied the world of practice is for jurists these days,” said Leckey. “Every so often in conversations with other law societies, we have a sense that they have a kind of list of the things, qualities or competencies a lawyer needs to have, and they look at times very much like someone operating as a sole practitioner.” It would be a shame, added Leckey, that the Bar School adopts a one-size fits-all approach.

The passage of Bill 75 has certainly helped the Quebec bar’s legal clinic get off the ground, even though the idea behind the legal clinic was on the table before the pandemic. Under Bill 75, law students working at university legal clinics can now provide legal advice and consultations under the supervision of lawyers and notaries. But though the bill passed in December 2020, not all university legal clinics have taken advantage. That’s because it resource-intensive, according to legal experts.

“Clinical or hands-on experiences, experiential learning as we call it, is very labour intensive to run, to have professionals involved, to have supervision to make sure students are having appropriate experiences and being evaluated,” said Leckey. “So it’s a big commitment that the Barreau and the École du Barreau are making. I’m confident that if they’re doing it, they have the resources to back it up.”

The four student legal clinics at the Université Sherbrooke are now mulling over whether to offer legal advice and consultations precisely because it requires so many resources, said Montambault-Trudelle. “The objective behind it is laudable, and we want to be able to do it but you need resources for supervisors and money for the organization of the effort,” said Montambault-Trudelle. “We will need to reorient ourselves if we ever want to go there which is why we're evaluating all possible options.”

In the meantime, Claveau is confident that the legal clinic pilot project will prove to be popular and that it may even serve as a model for other legal societies to follow suit. Leckey also hopes that other law societies are paying attention even though “tragically there isn’t that much contact between the sort of things going on in Quebec and the rest of the country, although there should be.”