Canadian Lawyer 4Students

In the United States, mandatory pro bono programs already exist at more than 20 law schools, including Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School. The University of Pennsylvania Law School was considered a trailblazer when it established its 70-hour pro bono requirement in 1989, the first national law school to do so. Arlene Finkelstein, assistant dean and executive director of the Toll Public Interest Center at Penn Law, says the require- 20 ntitled-3 1 fall 2013 CANADIAN ment was "a way to promote the professional responsibility that all lawyers have to be vehicles for access to justice, in addition to a wonderful platform for students to gain practical skills and to become engaged in their communities." She admits it was controversial at first, particularly because at the time mandatory pro bono hadn't really caught on. Now, almost 25 years later, the wider legal profession is jumping on board. Last year, New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman announced that starting in 2015, admission to the New York State bar will require lawyers to complete 50 hours of pro bono service in order to obtain a licence. "We are facing a crisis in New York and around the country," Lippman said in an October 2012 report on the new requirement. "At a time when we are still adjusting to the realities of shrinking state coffers and reduced budgets, more and more people find themselves turning to the courts. The courts are the emergency rooms of our society — the most intractable social problems find their way to our doors in great and increasing numbers. And more and more of the people who come into our courts each day are forced to do so without a lawyer." Canada is facing the same problem. In her report on self-represented litigants, University of Windsor Faculty of Law professor Julie Macfarlane found that consistently 40 per cent or more of litigants in family courts across the country are not represented by a lawyer and in some civil courts that number is 70 per cent or more. The legal profession — including law students — is starting to address the crisis. "Unfortunately lawyers charge significant fees for their services, and there are many people in our community who can't afford to pay those fees but have pressing legal issues that need to be resolved," says Brendan Stevens, a third-year student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Some argue it is every lawyer's duty to help address the issue. "As a legal profession, we do have a professional responsibility to mobilize and to provide services on a free or discounted level in order to provide more access to justice," says Jamie Maclaren, executive director of the Access Pro Bono Society of British Columbia. "In my mind, it truly is a professional responsibility. It stems from the fact that this is a selfregulating profession; we benefit as lawyers from a monopoly on legal services and in return for that we need to ensure that people do have some basic level of access to the justice system." By getting students to start pro bono work while they're in law school, it increases the chance of them continuing to do it into their careers, says Maclaren. "The hope is that we're developing a new L a w y e r 4 students 2/23/11 4:38:31 PM

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