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MANAGING PARTNER Increasing membership at fore for Joubert G BY GAIL J . COHEN uy Joubert takes over as president of the Canadian Bar Association at its annual meet- ing in Quebec City this month. Joubert is the first francophone from outside Quebec to lead the CBA and takes over from Bernard Amyot of Montreal. An IP practitioner and partner at Aikins MacAulay & Thorvaldson LLP in Winnipeg, the new president has been involved with the CBA for more than 22 years. He talks to Canadian Lawyer about his plans for the association over the next year. Q What are your priorities for the coming year? What I would like to do is to con- tinue building the membership of the Canadian Bar Association. Not only throughout Canada but, because of my background, particularly in Quebec, and I'm following Bernard Amyot and, his- torically speaking, it's a first for the CBA to have two francophone presidents and a first to have a national president that's a francophone from outside Quebec, so I want to seize that opportunity to grow membership in Quebec but also in other parts of the country. [W]e need to have a very strong association that not only rep- resents the jurists' interests but is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to de- fending those rights but also when it comes to defending the rights of the pub- lic and dealing with other issues that are critical to any legal system, such as the rule of law and those kinds of things. Q it will be working on during your tenure? Absolutely, and this is linked to membership. We have commis- sioned a working group that has been looking at conflicts of interest. It arises out of some recent Supreme Court [of Canada] decisions that touch on the duty of loyalty and also some of the questions relating to the duty of confidentiality. There's been some confusion within the legal community as to how to apply those standards. So what we've done is we've gathered together a formidable brain trust of individuals from across the coun- try that have been working on this proj- ect. They've analyzed the cases and they are poised to submit a report that will be tabled at the annual meeting in Quebec this August that will deal all of the issues. And also they will be submitting a tool kit that will contain things like retainer let- ters and checklists . . . that are very practi- cal that lawyers from small-town Mani- toba all the way up to a lawyer in the largest national firm in the country can go through and know what to do and how to handle certain conflict situations. Q What do you feel is the biggest issue fac ing the profession at the moment? We've recently conducted a survey . . . and one trend that's come up deals with this whole work-life balance is- sue. That's not only an issue for younger lawyers coming up the ladder who are the future of our profession, but it's an issue that's important for firms because they're faced with a higher turnover of young as- sociates. Obviously firms invest time and energy and effort in training young law- yers. One project we're focusing our at- tention on is how we can deal with that and better understand what needs to be done to address the concerns of the younger lawyers and also to address the concerns of the firms. [T]he young law- yers of the Canadian Bar Association, have been appropriately mandated to study this particular issue. I also think another one . . . is the whole question of legal aid. [W]e currently have been involved in a case out of B.C. about the right to legal aid [Canadian Bar As- sociation v. British Columbia]. We have sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court on a decision out of the B.C. Court of Appeal. The position of the Canadian Bar Association is that we had taken a sys- temic approach to that case and at both www. court levels in B.C., they said you can bring this on a case-by-case basis but the systemic approach is not the correct one. Q Q What do you think about the new system The CBA's position on that is that the process needs to be transpar- ent but the process also needs to be non- partisan. That's always been the concern of the Canadian Bar Association when this issue first came up for the last Su- preme Court nominee. It continues to be the CBA's concern that it will become highly political and it would become an opportunity for partisanship. like to share? One of the objectives of our strate- gic plan is to create a centre of ex- pertise at the Canadian Bar Association's national office. What we've been finding over the last few years is that there is a real scarcity or paucity of information or sta- tistics relating to the legal profession. Stats Canada's last bit of information they have dates back to the '50s so there's really not much information out there. To read more of GUY JOUBERT'S interview with Canadian Lawyer, visit us online at canadianlawyermag.com Law ye rmag.com A UGUST 2008 17