Author Archives: stephenpitel

Early Reminder of 2024 Conference

Posted on by

As winter turns to spring, we ramp up the planning for the annual conference. At this point we want to get the dates and location out to potential attendees so they can start thinking about their travel plans.

The conference will take place October 24-26, 2024. It will be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, hosted by the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. Professor Richard Devlin is the conference organizer.

The conference will start on the evening of Thursday, October 24 with an informal social get-together. The sessions will start on the morning of Friday, October 25 and will run to mid-day on Saturday, October 26.

The planning group will issue a call for presentation proposals later in the spring. As usual we will have sessions on research, teaching and the regulation of the profession. Please start thinking about a possible topic to propose.

Registration and accommodation information will follow in the summer. For now, save the dates and start contemplating your trip to Canada’s Ocean Playground.

Update from IAOLE: New Site, New Membership

Posted on by

CALE members who have an interest in legal ethics and professionalism at the international or comparative level are recommended to check out the new website of the International Association of Legal Ethics, which is here.

As part of a technological transition, the IAOLE is asking its previous members and anyone else who wants to become a member to register as a member under the Membership tab of the website.

The IAOLE is the host organization of the International Legal Ethics Conference (ILEC), held every two years, which was at UCLA in 2022 and will be at the University of Amsterdam on July 17-19, 2024. We previously posted about the call for papers in October 2023. The deadline to propose a paper is February 7, 2024.

Ethics Forum 2024

Posted on by

Registration is now open for the 2024 Ethics Forum, which is presented as a partnership between the CBA, FLSC and CALE. It happens on Friday, March 22, 2024 at the CBA conference centre in Toronto. For more information, including a detailed agenda with topics and speakers, see this web page.

This year’s panel sessions are entitled “Competence and Diversity”, “Law and Generative AI” and “The Duty to Report – How Far Does This Ethical Obligation Extend?” There will also be a keynote presentation over lunch on “Neurotechnology and the Practice of Law: Legal Ethics Intersections”. 

The Ethics Forum has been a popular event in previous years and so early registration is encouraged.

Brent Cotter receives CALE/ACEJ Lifetime Achievement Award

Posted on by

On October 20, 2023, during the annual conference at the University of Victoria, CALE/ACEJ presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to Senator Brent Cotter. The award is for having demonstrated “sustained accomplishments in the field of legal ethics and professionalism”.

Brent is one of the best-known and best-regarded scholars of legal ethics in Canada.  Throughout his career as a law professor, Brent has taught and published in the area of legal ethics.  Indeed, he is one of very few professors who specialized in legal ethics prior to 2000.  He played a fundamental role in increasing the profile of the field in Canadian law schools and legal education and in assisting newer colleagues in developing their own expertise in the field.

Continue reading →

Call for Papers: ILEC 2024

Posted on by

The next International Legal Ethics Conference will be held July 17-19, 2024 at the University of Amsterdam (details available here).  This major legal ethics conference is held every two years.  Recent previous conferences include UCLA (2022), Melbourne (2018), Fordham (2016) and City University London (2014).

The organizers have issued a call for proposals (available here), which includes both papers and other kinds of presentation such as workshops.  Proposals are due by February 7, 2024.  The theme is “Legal Professionals in a Digitalising World”.

It would be great to see a strong Canadian contingent in the Netherlands next summer.

Conference Recap 2023

Posted on by

The annual conference was held on October 19-21, 2023, at the University of Victoria. Pooja Parmar, the Vice-President of CALE/ACEJ, was the conference coordinator. She was assisted by Alan Treleaven, Robert Tapper, Laura Hamilton and Tayana Simpson. They did a terrific job and made all attendees very welcome.

Continue reading →

Second Submission to the National Requirement Review Committee

Posted on by

In June 2023 the National Requirement Review Committee of the FLSC invited feedback on options and preliminary proposals for amendments to the National Requirement described in a Discussion Paper available on the FLSC website. The National Requirement 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.

CALE/ACEJ had previously provided submissions (available here) at an earlier stage of the Review Committee’s work. It has now provided a response, available below, to the proposals in the Discussion Paper, focusing specifically on issues of legal ethics and professionalism.

submission-2-to-flsc-re-nr-2Download

Register for the 2023 Annual Conference

Posted on by

Thanks to conference coordinator Pooja Parmar and her team, details of the upcoming (October 19-21, 2023) CALE/ACEJ conference at the University of Victoria are now available and registration is open.

All the information you need is here.

The program, registration link, hotel information and a handy things-to-do document (prepared by Rob Lapper) are available. The conference features over 25 presenters covering a wide array of topics.

Your registration is not confirmed until you receive an e-mail from Laura Hamilton.

Due to room capacity issues, there is an upper limit on the number of people who can attend the conference. If you plan to attend, do not delay in registering.

New E-Mail Listserv Address and New Chief Information Officer

Posted on by

We are pleased to announce some changes relating to our information technology, particularly our listserv. First, Basil Alexander (UNB) has replaced Amy Salyzyn (Ottawa) as our Chief Information Officer, effective August 20, 2023. Second, our listserv now has a new address: CALE-ACEJ-listserv@googlegroups.com.

We are very grateful to Amy who has served as Chief Information Officer for several years and oversaw considerable growth in the size and level of interest in the listserv. She was also instrumental in developing our Community Guidelines. Amy remains the Chair of the Board of CALE/ACEJ.

Basil adds this portfolio to his ongoing work as Treasurer and Corporate Secretary of CALE/ACEJ. He has been busy in the new role, spearheading the movement of the listserv to a new home. We appreciate the enthusiasm he has brought to this task.

Since its creation the listserv had been based at the University of Ottawa, and CALE/ACEJ appreciates the technological support it has provided. We have decided that for ease of future transitions it is best for the listserv not to be based at a particular institution but rather somewhere more accessible. We have selected Google’s Groups platform for this purpose. Members of the listserv do not need a Google e-mail account or any other connection to Google.