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.
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Second Submission to the National Requirement Review Committee
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.
Notice of 2023 Annual General Meeting
CALE/ACEJ’s Annual General Meeting will take place on Saturday, October 21, 2023 at 8:30am (Pacific time) at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law, Victoria, British Columbia. All members of CALE/ACEJ are welcome to attend. The meeting is in-person only. Here is the agenda.
Register for the 2023 Annual Conference
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
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.
New Conference Travel Grant Program
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
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
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
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.
Submission to National Requirement Review Committee
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.
Canadian Association for Legal Ethics / Association canadienne pour l’éthique juridique 