New Conference Travel Grant Program

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As a result of funds generated from production and sales of Woolley, Devlin & Cotter, Lawyers’ Ethics and Professional Regulation, 4th ed (2021), CALE/ACEJ is able to announce that it is creating a new conference travel grant program. Thanks are due to all involved in the preparation of this casebook.

Starting in 2023, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in the field of legal ethics and professionalism are eligible to apply for a travel grant towards the cost of attending the annual CALE/ACEJ conference. To qualify they must either be (i) enrolled or based at a Canadian university or (ii) a Canadian enrolled or based at a foreign university.

Applications are due to the Vice-President by July 15, 2023. Applicants must provide sufficient information to establish their eligibility and explain their financial need for the travel grant. Applications will be assessed by the Vice-President and the Treasurer by July 30, 2023.

No more than $2000 is to be awarded in this year. No applicant is to receive more than $500 in a single year. The travel grant will be paid after the annual conference. To receive their grant, each recipient must submit receipts for travel or accommodation expenses to the Treasurer totaling at least the amount awarded.

Call for Nominations: CALE/ACEJ Awards

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Nominations are now sought for CALE/ACEJ’s two annual awards, with a due date of August 11, 2023.

The two awards are:

  • the CALE/ACEJ Best Paper Award, which recognizes the best legal ethics and professionalism paper by an emerging scholar, and
  • the CALE/ACEJ Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes sustained accomplishments in legal ethics and professionalism.

More information about the awards, including previous winners and the terms of the awards, is at https://ethicsincanada.com/cale-awards/.

For Best Paper nominations, submit an anonymized version of the paper to basil.s.alexander@gmail.com (can be your or someone else’s paper) by August 11, 2023. While we cannot ensure full blind review given the nature and size of the community, we will do the best we can.

For Lifetime Achievement nominations, complete and submit the nomination form (available on request from Corporate Secretary Basil Alexander) and the required supporting letter(s) to basil.s.alexander@gmail.com by August 11, 2023. If it is easier for you, the form and the supporting letter(s) may be submitted separately.

The awards will be presented at the annual conference (October 19-21, 2023) at the University of Victoria.

If you have any questions, contact Basil Alexander.

The selection committee for this year’s awards is Amy Salyzyn (chair), Brooke MacKenzie and Pooja Parmar.

2023 Conference: Call for Presentation Proposals

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As announced in March, the next annual CALE/ACEJ Conference will be held October 19-21, 2023, hosted by the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Like the 2022 conference, it will take place in-person.

Proposals are now invited for presentations on either teaching legal ethics or research and scholarship about legal ethics and professionalism. The latter includes research relating to the regulation of the profession.

We invite anyone interested in presenting on a topic to submit a proposal. We welcome proposals from junior scholars and from those working on legal ethics outside the academy. The eventual format of the presentations will depend on, among other things, the number of proposals we accept, but we expect that each presenter would have about 15-20 minutes plus time for questions. There is no need to have a formal paper accompanying your presentation: slides or oral remarks alone are fine. You need not have a finished product: works in progress are welcome.

One of the reasons for asking for proposals at this early stage is that we understand that for some applicants it can be easier to obtain funding to attend the CALE/ACEJ conference once you have been accepted as a speaker. We therefore aim to communicate acceptances as soon as we can so that you can leverage that acceptance to obtain funds.

For teaching, please respond to Andrew Flavelle Martin (andrew.martin@dal.ca) by June 30, 2023.

For research, please respond to Deanne Sowter (deannesowter@osgoode.yorku.ca) by June 30, 2023.

Save the Date for 2023 Annual Conference

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Next fall CALE/ACEJ will hold its annual conference at the University of Victoria in beautiful British Columbia. The conference will start on the evening of Thursday, October 19 with an informal social get-together. The sessions will start on the morning of Friday, October 20 and will run to mid-day on Saturday, October 21. Our conference coordinator is Professor Pooja Parmar.

The organizers will be putting out a call for presentation proposals later in the spring. As usual we will have sessions on research, teaching and the regulation of the profession. It is not too early to start thinking about a possible topic to propose.

Registration and accommodation information will follow in the summer. For now, save the dates and start envisaging your trip to Vancouver Island.

CBA-FLSC Ethics Forum 2023

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The 2020 version of this annual conference was, for many, the last in-person professional event before the pandemic shutdown. It is wonderful to see it return in person. The 2023 conference happens in Toronto on Friday, March 31.

The panel sessions this year are titled “Lawyering in Times of Chaos and Controversy”, “Legal Ethics and Family Law: Do Unique Challenges Require New Approaches?” and “A Wake Up Call: What is the path forward for improving lawyer mental health?”. The keynote speaker is Katrina Ingram, founder of Ethically Aligned AI, who will discuss artificial intelligence and the practice of law. In addition, the CBA Ethics and Professional Responsibility Subcommittee will present Part II of its Business of Law toolkit which deals with marketing.

More information (including a list of all moderators and presenters and the opportunity to register) is available here.

Commitment to CPD on Indigenous Intercultural Competence

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CALE/ACEJ is aware that a motion has been brought by lawyers in Alberta challenging the basis on which continuing professional development (CPD) on Indigenous intercultural competency has been mandated by the Law Society of Alberta (or other specific CPD the LSA may mandate).

In November 2021, CALE/ACEJ responded to a consultation by the Law Society of Ontario about competency requirements, particularly those about general and mandatory CPD, including specific CPD requirements. In its submission, it advocated that to meet the obligations under Call to Action 27, the LSO should require that all of its licensees complete Indigenous intercultural competence training.

This remains CALE/ACEJ’s position, not only in respect of the LSO but also in respect of the regulators of the legal profession in all provinces and territories. All legal regulators should develop and adopt such a requirement.

More information about the importance of general and mandatory CPD, including mandatory Indigenous intercultural competency, can be found in CALE/ACEJ’s November 2021 submissions (available below).

cale_acej-letter-lso-competence-taskforce-nov-25-final-to-sendDownload

Two Recent Articles

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The new edition (December 2022; volume 100:3) of the Canadian Bar Review includes two articles with CALE/ACEJ connections:

One is “Legal Ethics and the Promotion of Substantive Equality” by Daniel Del Gobbo. An earlier version of this article won CALE/ACEJ’s best paper prize, awarded in October 2022.

The other is “A Mixed Bag: Critical Reflections on the Revised Ethical Principles for Judges” by five members of the CALE/ACEJ board of directors. Elements of this article were presented at ILEC at UCLA in August 2022.

Both articles are available here. Happy reading.

Submission to National Requirement Review Committee

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In September 2022 the National Requirement Review Committee of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada called for input at the outset of a review of the National Requirement (which specifies the competencies and skills graduates of Canadian law school programs and internationally trained graduates and lawyers must have acquired to be admitted to law society admission programs in the Canadian common law jurisdictions). The call for input is available here. CALE/ACEJ has responded to this call for input and its response is available below.

submission-to-flsc-re-nrDownload

Conference Recap 2022

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It was a great pleasure to return to an in-person conference this year. Our host was the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University and we are indebted to Dean Jula Hughes, Wendy Parkes and their team, including several faculty members, for running a terrific event. We met October 20-22, 2022.

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Annual Meeting 2022

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On October 22, 2022, CALE/ACEJ held its annual meeting of members at the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law, Lakehead University. This was the first such meeting held in person since 2019. In her report, President Amy Salyzyn outlined CALE/ACEJ’s activities over the past year, including creating new guidelines for the listserv, updating the members list and drafting submissions to the Law Society of Ontario and the Federation of Law Societies of Canada on topics such as continuing legal education, compensation for articling students and competency requirements for NCA students. She also praised a strong Canadian showing at the recent International Legal Ethics Conference at UCLA.

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