Law Times

Page 4 December 1, 2014 • Law Times www.lawtimesnews.com Clinic's unpaid articling job creates a stir By yamri Taddese Law Times pro bono articling job posted for a Greater To- ronto Area legal clinic has created a stir around unpaid legal work. The job posting, posted on Le- gal Aid Ontario's web site, says the Durham Community Legal Clinic is looking for a student for a 10-month unpaid gig. In addition to assisting legal workers at the clinic, the student will also represent clients before tribunals and undertake legal case work in some areas of the law, ac- cording to the job posting. A suit- able candidate would need to have a car, the advertisement noted. Employment lawyer Danny Kastner of Turnpenney Milne LLP says unpaid articling defies com- mon sense. "Unpaid articling positions are lawful," says Kastner. "Articling students are ex- empted from the minimum wage protections in the Employment Standards Act. But as a matter of policy and common sense, law stu- dents who have broken the bank to complete their legal education shouldn't have to submit to 10 months of unpaid work to become qualified." For its part, Legal Aid Ontario says clinics make their own hiring decisions. "Durham Community Legal Clinic is, of course, one of the 76 le- gal clinics we fund," says Genevieve Oger, a spokeswoman for LAO. "You may also know they func- tion independently and they're re- sponsible for their hiring and man- agement decisions. They have their own boards of directors and these independent boards represent the communities they serve. The ques- tions really need to be asked of the Durham legal clinic." Deborah Hastings, executive di- rector of the Durham clinic, didn't respond to a request for comment. Lenny Abramowicz, executive di- rector of the Association of Com- munity Legal Clinics of Ontario, says legal clinics do offer unpaid articles on occasion. Clinics' pref- erence would be to always pay ar- ticling students, says Abramowicz, but every year LAO funds just four to five articling jobs across the 74 organizations in Ontario. "A clinic would get funding to re- tain an articling student usually once every 15 years," says Abramowicz. "We don't have the funding for it. That's our fundamental prob- lem," he says, adding that although clinics aren't proud to offer unpaid articles, they're not in the same cat- egory as for-profit private corpora- tions that hire interns for no pay. Kastner says legal clinics are "desperate to support the commu- nities they serve" and notes "this is the result." To say hiring choices are entire- ly the responsibility of clinic boards is akin to "a parent not giving their child breakfast, then scolding the kid for falling asleep in class," says Kastner. "LAO should fund this position immediately." But according to Abramowicz, the problem is also about the cri- sis around articling and the lack of paid positions. He says he often gets calls from students who are unable to find paid positions and are willing to work for free. "If the profession believes it's important to have articles of clerk- ship, then there should be a fund created," he says. "I'm old enough to remember when I started paying my law society dues, there was a certain percentage of it that went to a legal aid levy. . . . Someone in their wisdom decided that wasn't a good idea." LT NEWS How the legal community in Ontario gets its NEWS To order your copy visit www.lawtimesnews.com or call 416.609.3800 or 1.800.387.5164 SUBSCRIBE TO LAW TIMES TODAY! Cutting-edge legal affairs, news and commentary for just 50 cents a day! Make time for Law Times and keep up with all the developments in Ontario's legal scene. SUBSCRIBE TODAY AND RECEIVE: t 40 issues a year covering Ontario's legal landscape t FREE Unlimited access to Law Times digital editions and digital edition archives t FREE Canadian Legal Newswire, a weekly e-newsletter from the editors of Law Times and Canadian Lawyer FREE Digital edition included! To order your copy Untitled-7 1 2014-11-26 9:48 AM A 'LAO should fund this position immedi- ately,' says Danny Kastner. Ukrainian lawyers organize to help situation back home By yamri Taddese Law Times he Ukrainian Canadian Bar Association is alive once again with a renewed purpose of help- ing out with the situation in Ukraine. The revival of the association last week, which faded away after its creation in the early 1990s, comes at a critical time for Ukraine, a country that remains in crisis after the ouster of former president Viktor Yanukovych early this year. Ukrainian-Canadian lawyers say they're reorganizing themselves partly because they could get requests to provide assistance with judicial reform in their home country. "This initiative came about quite clearly as a result of what's been happening in Ukraine since approxi- mately this time last year, which is the [demonstrations at] Maidan and then the invasion and everything else," says Alex Ilchenko, senior counsel at Pallett Valo LLP in Mississauga, Ont., and the new president of the revived association. Over the summer, members of the Ukrainian-Canadian bar got together with Paul Grod, the president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, and de- cided they needed a network of Ukraini- an-Canadian lawyers to help each other and their birth country. Grod, a former lawyer at Gowl- ing Laf leur Henderson LLP and current chief executive officer of Rodan En- ergy Solutions, says both the Canadian go vernment and authorities in Ukraine have previously called upon him to provide assistance with legal and judicial matters. "There's a lot of interest right now be- cause of the current situation in Ukraine and the evolving need for judicial reform and legal reform," says Grod. "There's a real need from the Ukrai- nian side for competent Ukrainian- speaking lawyers and judges to help them as they reform their economy and move towards Europe." Some of the members of the associa- tion recently hosted a group of lawyers from Ukraine to talk about setting up legal aid in that country, a project partly funded by the Canadian government, ac- cording to Grod. There's also a "real need" in Ukraine for reform of the prosecutor general, says Grod. "They're really looking to reform that system not only to have experts and advis- ers but ideally there would be Ukrainian- speaking lawyers, prosecutors, and judges on the ground in Ukraine helping them in reforming their system, which was historically corrupt and frankly abused, often used by government to prosecute political opponents." He notes Ukrainian authorities are now looking at Canada as a solid exa m- ple of a functioning democracy with an independent judiciary. The Ukrainian Canadian Bar Asso- ciation emerged just after Ukrainian in- dependence in 1991 but faded away a few years later. At the time, Ukrainian society "wasn't ready for these concepts; they had much bigger issues to deal with," says Ilchenko. "We didn't want to be in a situation where we as the diaspora were telling them what to do," he says. "[The association] faded out because we needed a buy-in from Ukrainian law- yers over there and they were still organiz- ing their society because one day you had the Soviet Union and the next day there was no Soviet Union." The immediate goal is to organize the Ukrainian legal community in Canada first through expanding the association, which is now in Toronto only, to other major cities across the country. Ilchenko says he doesn't know the exact number of lawyers of Ukrainian origin in Canada but estimates it's "in the hundreds." The association will also offer mentor- ship opportunities for younger lawyers and give continuing professional devel- opment courses, says Ilchenko, adding that thanks to technology, organizing the group is much easier now than it was two decades ago. LT T

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