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Understanding access
Collaboration helps law societies develop practical strategies
Photo by Laura Hilchey Photography
Confused. Frustrated. Anxious. Stressed. Angry. Bewildered.
Humiliated. Isolated. Frightened. Exhausted. Wanting to
just give up.
• last year in Halifax, 1,700
individuals used shelters, with an
average stay of 40 nights.
Marla Cranston
Communications Officer
This is how a roomful of lawyers and regulators felt on October 8
after a three-hour ‘poverty sensitization’ exercise called Living on the
Edge, presented by United Way Halifax during the 2014 Annual
Conference of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.
“Every one of those words are words we also hear in relation to the
justice system. It’s a system that doesn’t make sense to many people,”
Darrel Pink, Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society
said to more than 100 delegates representing the Federation and 14
provincial and territorial law societies.
Adopting new identities for the afternoon, each participant imagined
the daily challenges of poverty. They grappled with eviction notices
and expensive dental emergencies, affording daycare while jobhunting,
forgoing grocery shopping in order to pay utility bills and,
in some cases, language barriers or brushes with the law. The United
Way plans to offer the exercise to other groups in the Halifax region,
to deepen the understanding of poverty’s complexity, and how a
sudden change of circumstance can significantly impact choices.
Catherine Woodman, President and CEO of United Way Halifax,
rooted the role-playing in some sobering statistics:
• three million Canadians live in poverty today;
• 833,000 used a food bank in 2013, a 23% increase over the past
six years; and
For the law society reps, it was “an opportunity to step outside our
normal roles, and our comfort zones perhaps, to see the issues from a
different perspective,” said Moncton lawyer Marie-Claude Bélanger-
Richard QC, President of the Federation. Law societies have a critical
role to play in the pressing issues of access to justice and access to legal
services, and “I believe our strength lies in leading through ongoing
collaboration,” she said.
Community visits
The collaboration theme came into focus on October 9, as participants
split up into groups and fanned out across the city for 11 inspiring
conversations with community and justice-oriented organizations.
They asked this question at many of the sites: If you could remove
one barrier or add one resource to give people access to justice, what
would it be?
Teenagers and young adults offered many thoughtful ideas at Leave
Out Violence (LOVE), a violence prevention and intervention
organization. A legal toolkit for youth, with basic information in clear
language, would be a great start, said one. Better teaching of the legal
system in schools, and ongoing legal information via social media
channels would also help, “something that would get us interested to
build that level of trust,” said others.
“If you’re a member of a marginalized group outside of mainstream
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