The Access to Justice Committee of the Law Society of Ontario has requested feedback on its proposal for a three-year pilot project to count eligible pro bono towards CPD (further information available here). CALE/ACEJ has responded to this request per the letter below.
Category Archives: CALE business
Conference Recap 2025
The annual conference was held on October 23-25, 2025 at the Fort Garry Hotel, organized by the Faculty of Law of the University of Manitoba. Gillian MacNeil was the conference coordinator. She and her colleagues did a terrific job and made all attendees very welcome.
The conference was generously supported by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, the Manitoba Law Foundation, the Marcel A. Desautels Centre for Private Enterprise and the Law, the Law Society of Manitoba and the University of Manitoba.
Continue readingAnnual Meeting 2025
On October 25, 2025, CALE/ACEJ held its annual meeting of members at the Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In his report, President Stephen Pitel outlined CALE/ACEJ’s activities over the past year, including: continuing its Travel Grant Program to support graduate students and post-doctoral fellows attending the conference; partnering with the CBA and FLSC for the 2025 Ethics Forum; and submissions to the Equity and Indigenous Affairs Committee of the Law Society of Ontario about a proposed Indigenous Cultural Training Course.
Continue readingMalcolm Mercer and Tayo Olarewaju Receive CALE/ACEJ Awards for 2025
On October 25, 2025, during its annual conference hosted in Winnipeg by the University of Manitoba, CALE/ACEJ presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to Malcolm Mercer and its Best Paper Award to Tayo Olarewaju.
Continue reading2025 Conference Registration Open
Thanks to conference coordinator Gillian MacNeil and her team, you can now register for the upcoming CALE/ACEJ conference to be hosted by the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg on October 23-25, 2025.
Register here.
The conference will take place at the Fort Garry Hotel in downtown Winnipeg. At the bottom of the conference page, you will find a link to the hotel website that will allow you to book one of the rooms in our block (conference room rate is $209 per night). Book by September 22, 2025 to obtain the conference rate.
As usual, there will be an informal dinner on Thursday, October 23, 2025 so do plan to arrive so as to be able to attend. The conference program will be shared in advance of the start of the conference. The conference typically concludes in the early afternoon on the Saturday.
Response to LSO Consultation About Proposed Indigenous Cultural Training Course
The Equity and Indigenous Affairs Committee of the Law Society of Ontario has requested feedback on its Consultation Report – Indigenous Cultural Training Course (available here). CALE/ACEJ has responded to this request; see the letter below.
Call for Presentation Proposals: Annual Conference 2025 in Winnipeg
The next annual CALE/ACEJ Conference will be held October 23-25, 2025, hosted by the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. 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.
Submit your proposal by e-mail. The deadline for submissions is June 27, 2025. To submit a teaching proposal, e-mail both Amy Salyzyn (amy.salyzyn@uottawa.ca) and Gillian MacNeil (gillian.macneil@umanitoba.ca). To submit a research proposal, e-mail both Andrew Martin (andrew.martin@dal.ca) and Brandon Trask (brandon.trask@umanitoba.ca).
Travel Grants: 2025 Conference
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 continue its conference travel grant program (created in 2023). Thanks are due to all involved in the preparation of this casebook.
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 (October 23-25, 2025 at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg). 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 18, 2025. 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 August 1, 2025.
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
As a sign of the coming spring, nominations are once again open for CALE/ACEJ’s two annual awards, with a due date of August 8, 2025.
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.
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 8, 2025. 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 8, 2025. The form and the supporting letter(s) may be submitted separately.
The awards will be presented at the annual conference (October 23-25, 2025) at the University of Manitoba.
If you have any questions, contact Basil Alexander.
The selection committee for this year’s awards is Amy Salyzyn (chair), Andrew Bernstein and Pooja Parmar.
John Law Receives CALE/ACEJ Lifetime Achievement Award
On October 25, 2024, during its annual conference at the Dalhousie University, CALE/ACEJ presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to Emeritus Professor John Law. The award is for having demonstrated “sustained accomplishments in the field of legal ethics and professionalism”.
John was a professor at the University of Alberta for many years and was appointed as the Thomas Lawlor Professor of Legal Ethics in 2013. In the 1980s and 1990s he played a leading role in the creation of the Alberta Code of Professional Conduct, which was highly influential across Canada due to the guidance it provided.
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Canadian Association for Legal Ethics / Association canadienne pour l’éthique juridique 