In 2018, the ACCLE Policy Committee conducted a survey of clinicians and clinical legal education programs across Canada to better understand the state of clinical legal education in Canada. The report outlines three primary, overarching themes: the working conditions and status of clinicians, operational concerns, and pedagogical and instructional supports. Based on these results, ACCLE looks forward to further working with our membership in shaping our advocacy over the next several years. Please contact ACCLE President Gemma Smyth (gemma.smyth@uwindsor.ca) with any feedback about this report.

Final ACCLE Policy Committee Report (pdf)

Final ACCLE Policy Committee Report (doc)

In 2018, the Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education (ACCLE) Policy Committee surveyed clinicians and academics working in clinical legal education. Please read our Final ACCLE Policy Committee Report which contains the results of this membership survey. Concerns raised by respondents include funding, working conditions, job security, and pedagogical challenges. We look forward to discussing these results and pathways forward at our 2018 conference.

ACCLE / ACECD (Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education / Association Canadienne pour l’enseignement clinique du droit) is thrilled to announce that it will once again co-host its annual Conference with CALT / APCD (Canadian Association of Law Teachers / L’Association Canadienne des professeurs de droit) from Thursday, May 31 – Saturday, June 2, 2018. Our joint conference will take place at the Faculty of Law, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Please mark the date on your calendars and plan to join us in Kingston, Ontario for this exciting event!

We have partnered with CALT for our ninth annual conference due to the overwhelmingly positive feedback we received from last year’s conference in Victoria, British Columbia. ACCLE is comprised of a group of individuals and clinics interested in supporting clinical legal education in Canada. The organization shares best practices, pedagogies and other information related to clinical legal education. ACCLE encourages the promotion and improvement of clinical legal education in Canadian law schools, promotes clinical pedagogy and research, and facilitates the dissemination of information pertaining to clinical legal education to clinicians in Canada. Each year, ACCLE hosts a conference in various locations across Canada for the above mentioned purpose. Speakers address a wide range of issues relating to clinical legal education.

Please see our English and French Call for Proposals for Participation for further information.

You can find here the PDF version of the English and French Call for Proposals for Participation.

A Joint Conference of the Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education & the Canadian Association of Law Teachers

The Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education (ACCLE) and the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) are pleased to announce that our annual conferences for 2018 will be held jointly at the Faculty of Law, Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario), from Thursday 31 May to Saturday 2 June 2018.

The theme of the joint conference is “The Whole Lawyer 2.0” and we are pleased to release this Call for Proposals for Participation. 

Background to Theme

At our 2017 joint conference, we were collectively introduced to and initially explored the notion of “the whole lawyer”. We did so through the work of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) in its “Foundations for Practice” study, as well through the Calls for Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Our initial explorations raised many issues, concerns and questions of ongoing significance and interest. This successive joint conference will more fully explore key topics related to “the whole lawyer” and continue critical conversations related to several key sub-themes.

Thematic Key Topics

This conference again brings together legal educators, clinicians, and others involved in legal education before, during and after law school. The conference will focus on the contributions of law schools, legal clinics and other experiential education programs, regulators, the bar, and professional development programs in producing “the whole lawyer”. In order to build on last year’s sessions, we have identified, below, a number of key topics within that theme that we suggest are particularly deserving of further exploration:

1. Legal Education and the TRC Calls for Action: Ongoing responses & critical conversations
2. App-Lawyer Issues: Technological Know-how in Legal Education
3. The Concept and Definition of ‘Competency’: Friend or Foe?
4. The What, Why, and How of Legal Education for ‘The Character Quotient’ and other ‘Soft Skills’
5. New Approaches to the ‘Old Skills’ in Legal Education: Lectures and Exams are Dead, Long Live the Lecture and the Exam!
6. Legal Education and Professional Identity Development: So You Want to Be a Community Lawyer?
7. Addressing and Advancing Access to Justice in Legal Education
8. Articling and Alternatives: Issues, Challenges and Reform in ‘Transitional Training’
9. Teaching and Learning Legal Ethics: Approaches in the Classroom and the Clinic

Non-Thematic Topics

CALT and ACCLE each plan to have portions of their programs set aside for non-theme events or sessions (e.g. Teaching Tips & Troubleshooting Workshop; Clinical Supervision Workshop; Regulatory Issues Roundtable; New or Improved Clinics Showcase).  We therefore also welcome proposals for presentations or sessions relating to non-thematic topics.  Please note though that we are NOT inviting proposals relating to general areas of research.

Call for Proposals for Participation

We invite you to submit Proposals for Participation that relate to a thematic key topic or a non-theme topic of interest to the joint audience.  Proposals can be for an individual contribution or for a collective exploration.

Regardless of whether individual or collective, we encourage contributions that aim to activate engagement, exchange and interaction among participants. The traditional session formats used at the joint conference are Panel, Workshop or Roundtable, but proposals for use of other formats are welcome, including demonstrations or experiments in non-traditional or dynamic presentation formats (such as Pecha Kucha). Conference organizers may seek more information on formats for collective explorations.  Individual contributions will usually be grouped thematically and may require collaboration among the individuals to ensure a coherent and engaging session.

Submissions: This year, we are asking conference participants to submit proposals by filling in a Google form, found at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSciwv0LS2D2fB-idkuI4SgiC2uiTCm36y5rNKWLZgQPCLPl9w/viewform.  Please submit your proposal via the Google form by Friday January 12, 2018.

Proposals will be reviewed and selected by members of the ACCLE /CALT Conference Committee based on their quality and relevance to the theme and goals of the conference.

Questions about this call for participation should be directed to Prof. Gemma Smyth gemma.smyth@uwindsor.ca  (for ACCLE) or Prof. David Wiseman dwiseman@uottawa.ca  (for CALT).

PLEASE NOTE: All participants will be responsible for their own conference expenses.

See official Call for Papers here.

The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights is a centre within the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law devoted to advocacy, research and education in the area of constitutional rights in Canada. Since its inception in 2008, the Centre has intervened in several significant Charter litigation cases and has keenly observed the successes and challenges of public interest litigation.

Interventions in Charter litigation and public interest litigation brought by lawyers and legal advocacy organizations play a role, not only in the courts in which the matters take place, but also within the public discourse surrounding the Charter and human rights issues raised. Public interest litigation may also cause burdens on courts and have unintended negative consequences if they are not well planned, coordinated or brought prematurely.

The Asper Centre is convening a one-day Conference in March 2018 focused on legal strategies for successful public interest litigation in Canada as a means to bring together relevant stakeholders to share their challenges, successes and strategies in this field. The Conference is aimed at both practitioners (lawyers and NGOs) who are engaged in public interest litigation and scholars who study and analyze the impact of these cases, all of whom seek to ensure that public interest litigation has the maximum social impact possible.

• At this time, the Asper Centre is seeking submissions of abstracts covering the following broad areas for consideration:
• Development of meaningful strategies for public interest litigation and the coordination of strategic litigation between intervening organizations and stakeholders
• Reviewing the role of interveners in public interest litigation: Do their arguments really matter?
• Developing effective policy and legal advocacy strategies in addition to public interest litigation
• Case analyses to extract lessons from successful as well as unsuccessful public interest litigation across various substantive areas

The Conference is scheduled for March 2, 2018 and authors of papers chosen for presentation will be notified by December 15, 2017. Draft papers must be submitted by February 9, 2018. Papers will be in one of the two following formats:

Stream A: Longer paper covering an issue or related issues in public interest litigation with expected length of approximately 8,000 words.

Stream B: Shorter case analysis focusing on lessons learned from a specific public interest case with expected length of up to 1500 words.

Abstracts for papers should be maximum 250 words in length and sent with a 1-2 paragraph biographical statement to: Tal Schreier, Asper Centre Program Coordinator at tal.schreier@utoronto.ca

Deadline for Submissions: November 30, 2017

See official Call for Papers here.

Thank you to everyone who attended the 2017 ACCLE conference, co-sponsored with the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT). Please stay tuned for an announcement regarding next year’s conference.

ACCLE wishes to extend its sincere thanks to Signa Daum Shanks and Brian Eyolfson for their deeply informative and helpful remarks at our recent AGM.  Their discussion offers a helpful framework and some practical advice as we begin to consider the implications of the TRC’s Calls to Action for our clinical programs.  For our members who missed this important session, we hope to have the recording available on our website shortly.  In the interim, Professor Shanks has shared an important new article – Dr. Shauneen Pete’s 100 Ways: Indigenizing & Decolonizing Academic Programs – to assist us in our thinking on these issues.

Congratulations to ACCLE Board Member Martha Simmons on the publication of her new text Mediation: A Comprehensive Guide to Effective Client Advocacy.  Described as a “must-read” for lawyers and law students, the book offers step-by-step guidance in navigating the mediation process, including case and client assessment, how to choose an effective mediator, mediation preparation, ethical considerations, how to overcome barriers to settlement, and when to end mediation.  Professor Martha Simmons is a visiting professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and the Director of the Mediation Intensive Program and Clinic.