Dear ACCLE members,

The inaugural 2020 ACCLE Award recipients have been announced:

1)    The Buhler Award: Named in honour of Sarah Buhler, long-time ACCLE Board member and Professor at the College of Law University of Saskatchewan.  This award is presented to a professor whose work intersects academic and clinical approaches to clinical and experiential legal education.

The inaugural recipient of this award is Gemma Smyth– Associate Dean at the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor.  Ms. Smyth is receiving this award in recognition of her commitment to researching the practice of clinical legal education across the country, in addition to her long-time commitment to ACCLE.

2)    The Cirillo Award: Named in honour of Lisa Cirillo, long-time ACCLE Board member and Director of Downtown Legal Services in Toronto.  This award is presented to an individual clinician who has made a significant contribution to the life of their clinic.

The inaugural recipient of this award is Chantelle Johnson– Executive Director of the Community Legal Assistance Services for Saskatoon Inner City (“CLASSIC”).  Ms. Johnson is receiving this award in recognition of her tireless work both educating/mentoring law students and assisting the marginalized members of her community.

3)    The Ferguson Award: Named in honour of Doug Ferguson, founder and long-time ACCLE Board member and former Director of the Community Legal Services at Western Law.  This award is presented to member/ group involved in a clinical project or program that promotes access to justice and clinical law within a law school setting.

The inaugural recipient of this award is Kathy Ferriera– Director of the Queen’s Prison Law Clinic.  Ms. Ferreira is receiving this award in recognition of her work shaping the Correctional Law Project into a large-scale expansive operation under which students assist prisoners with issues pertaining to correctional law, administrative law and human rights law.

ACCLE is proud to recognize these members for their significant contributions to Canadian clinical legal education.  Big congratulations to all of this year’s winners!  Please consider nominating your colleagues for these awards in 2021.

Dear ACCLE Members,

In light of the ongoing pandemic, ACCLE has postponed the Annual Conference to October 27-29, 2021. The location at the Holiday Inn – Yorkdale in Toronto will remain the same.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Dear ACCLE Members,

In light of concerns caused by the spread of COVID-19, and at the advisement of the ACCLE conference committee, we are postponing our annual conference, originally scheduled for June 2020. It is our intention at this time to hold the conference in the late Fall (likely late October), and we will confirm the new dates as soon as possible.

Thank you for your understanding.

The Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education (ACCLE) is delighted to confirm that we will be hosting our 11th Annual Conference at the Holiday Inn – Toronto Yorkdale, happening June 3-5, 2020.

The focus of our 2020 conference is “Perseverance, Resilience, and Resistance in Canadian Clinical Legal Education”. We are interested in exploring questions such as:

• What are the ongoing and future challenges to clinical legal education in Canada and worldwide?
• In what ways do clinics and/or clinicians employ strategies of perseverance, resilience, and/or resistance?
• How can fiscal challenges provide opportunities for students to embrace modes of perseverance and resilience in pursuing access to justice for vulnerable client populations?
• Alternatively, how might narratives of resilience be damaging to clinics’ clients, students, and clinicians?
• How can community partnerships and interdisciplinary approaches facilitate new opportunities for clinics, clinicians, and law students?
• During times of fiscal challenge, how can resistance help you serve your mandate?

ACCLE invites proposals for papers or workshops that fit within the general theme of “perseverance, resilience, and resistance in Canadian clinical legal education”. We welcome participation and submissions from all legal educators, as well as professionals from other related fields. We are especially interested in proposals seeking to engage the audience in an interactive or dynamic way.

The deadline to submit is January 31, 2020.

See the official call for proposals here.

Dear ACCLE members,

We are pleased to announce that the ACCLE Repository will be launching December 2019. The repository will hold various resources for clinicians including training materials, academic papers, policy papers, and more. Members will also be able to contribute their own materials, as we hope to grow the repository into a wide-ranging, knowledge sharing platform for clinicians.

Registration is simple. You will head over to intranet.accle.ca, where you will be prompted for a login. We will be emailing out a universal login for all members to use in the next month through the listserv. The password for this login will change each year, and with your membership renewal, you will receive the updated passwords.

When the login is distributed, we will also include details about how to use the repository, such as searching for and submitting materials.

If you are interested in accessing the repository, please ensure that you are registered as an ACCLE Member for the 2019/2020 year and have paid your membership fee.

Gemma

Canadian Association of Law Teachers Conference

Location: Western University, London, ON

Date: 1-3 June, 2020

We are pleased to release this Call for Proposals for the 2020 annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers, which is being held as part of the 2020 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences and includes an overlap day with the conference of the Canadian Law and Society Association. The program for the overlap day will be co-ordinated to encourage integrated participation.

The Congress theme is “Bridging Divides: Confronting Colonialism & Anti-Black Racism”, which has been explained as follows:

Congress 2020 will encourage multidisciplinary engagement under the broad concept of bridging divides, while specifically emphasizing the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans in the new world. Settler colonialism, as part of a broader imperial project, erases Indigenous peoples by appropriating land and delegitimizing traditional knowledge, and dehumanizes Black people, subjecting them to the tropes of everyday anti-Black racism. As we come together to confront white privilege and white supremacy, and examine experiences shared by Indigenous peoples and African Canadians, we also invite our community to reflect critically on social, ethnic, political and epistemological divisions more broadly, forming a future vision that bridges divides between divergent ways of knowing and navigating our world.

Please send all proposals, in Word format, as well as any suggestions or expressions of interest, to <calt.conference.acpd@gmail.com> no later than Monday 25 November.

See the official call for proposals here

Please save the date for ACCLE’s 2020 Conference to be held in Toronto, Ontario June 3-5, 2020. More information will be posted to the ACCLE website soon.

Read ACCLE’s letter to Hon. Caroline Mulroney opposing cuts to legal aid in Ontario here.

ACCLE is pleased to present submissions to the Senate Subcommittee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on Bill C-75. The complete submissions are below.

Bill C75 ACCLE Senate Final

Registration for ACCLE’s 10th Annual Conference “Looking Back, Moving Forward: Future Challenges for Clinical Legal Education in Canada” is now open.    We are delighted to confirm  Justice Gloria Epstein will be our opening keynote speaker.  On day 2,  Professor David A. Santacroce, founder and president of the Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education at Michigan Law will offer participants a introduction to CSALE and its work.

In addition to these honoured guests, we have an exciting line-up of concurrent sessions on a wide variety of issues relating to clinical and experiential education.  And because we have heard from you, our membership, year over year that the primary value of these annual conferences is the ability to connect with each other, we have built-in generous break times and a series of social events  (a pre-conference reception & conference dinner, followed by our now annual disco!) to create these opportunities for connection.

The conference will take place in beautiful London, Ontario, ACCLE’s “birthplace”.  It will begin with a pre-conference reception the evening of June 12 and will run through to end of day Friday, June 14.

Details about the conference schedule, registration and accommodation options can all be found on the registration site.

Please join us in London for this very special event.