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.
CBA-FLSC Ethics Forum 2023
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
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).
Two Recent Articles
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.
Canadian Association for Legal Ethics / Association canadienne pour l’éthique juridique 