Julie Macfarlane
Bernie Mayer
This week’s episode is taken from a keynote speech recently delivered by Julie and her husband and professor of conflict resolution, Bernie Mayer, to the joint annual conference of the Ontario Association of Family Mediators and the Ontario Collaborative Law Federation. Julie and Bernie addressed an audience of mediators and legal professionals focused on Access to Justice – a sample of insiders – and presented them with two challenges: to consider Access to Justice as a threshold issue, and to examine how we handle conflict in our wider culture. They discussed the ways paternalism and a system of complex rules are holding the legal profession back, and how system insiders need to face and address systemic problems. The episode outro is provided by family lawyer Chris Arnold, whose Ottawa practice focuses on family mediation and collaborative family law; Chris was present for Julie and Bernie’s speech, and he reflects on the reception it got at the conference.
Related:
Bernie Mayer at Creighton University
Ontario Association for Family Mediation
Ontario Collaborative Law Federation
In Other News:
In other news: last week, leaders of 50 justice organizations in British Columbia joined Attorney General David Eby and Chief Justice of British Columbia Robert Bauman to mark the signing of the Access to Justice Triple Aim, which will guide initiatives and reforms for making family and civil justice more accessible to British Columbians; a recent podcast from the Lawyerist podcast is all about access to justice, and includes an in-depth conversation with Professor Rebecca Sandefur; and finally, NSRLP announced last week that we have two new members joining our Advisory Board, Justice David Price, and Ms. Jana Saracevic – welcome both!
Article about the Access to Justice Triple Aim project (Indo-Canadian Voice)
An Access to Justice podcast featuring Rebecca Sandefur (Lawyerist)
Announcing new NSRLP Advisory Board members
Jumping Off the Ivory Tower is produced and hosted by Julie Macfarlane and Dayna Cornwall; production and editing by Brauntë Petric; Other News produced and hosted by Ali Tejani; promotion by Moya McAlister and Ali Tejani.
In relation to people wanting to have more control of their file when working with their lawyer as opposed to the lawyer taking over. I think somehow it has been lost that legal services are just that, “services”; and the client pays for those very services. It should be the client that directs the lawyer how they want to proceed and the lawyer researches and then advises their client what is best for them using the appropriate applicable sections of legislation. How did we get to a place where the “fancy office” has taken the place of “access to justice”?