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the law society publicly advocate in the public interest for an adequately publicly funded legal aid system with a statutory foundation that is independent of the government and (b) that the law soci- ety request that the Legal Aid Society immediately rescind the recent changes including the changes to the financial eligibility guidelines and the choice of counsel provisions. And much like the B.C. effort, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law is targeting middle-class access to justice in an ongoing project. Professor Michael Trebilcock, who wrote a 2008 report on the state of Ontario's legal aid system, says the initiative acknowledges that efforts must be made to bolster the middle class' participation in the system, especially on the civil law side. Trebilcock notes most studies show a U-shaped distribution of access to legal services. The poorest of the poor qualify for legal aid, and the very wealthy can pay for a lawyer on their own, but the vast group in between is typi- cally left out. The U of T group has con- ducted a review of literature on civil legal needs, identifying debtor/creditor issues, employment law, and family law matters as the most pressing areas for increased service. The project will culminate with a series of three research papers to be presented at an international conference this fall. Trebilcock says the law school may create a pilot program in which law students would provide legal services in one of the high-need areas. A HOLISTIC APPROACH M eanwhile, other experts say a more holistic approach to the provision of legal aid services is what's needed most. In the CBA report titled, "Moving Forward on Legal Aid," Melina Buckley outlines some options, including multidisciplinary practices where lawyers collaborate with other professionals to guard against "referral fatigue" among cli- ents. This type of arrangement, suggests Buckley, can make it easier for the lawyer to focus on the individual's legal issues, while also providing a better idea of the client's health or personal circumstances that may underlie legal problems. Buckley uses the Bronx Defenders in the U.S. as an example of this holistic approach to legal services. The program brings together social workers, youth and community outreach staff, criminal defence lawyers, and civil lawyers with expertise in child welfare, housing, and immigration matters. "Inter-disciplinary working groups reflect the interconnect- edness of the issues facing low-income clients and can best meet their overall needs," reads the report. "Instead of solv- ing a legal problem and often seeing the client continue in the situation that gave rise to the problem, a holistic approach holds the promise of a more fundamental and permanent change in circumstances." One assumes such a program would offer significant cost savings to the justice sys- tem and other social programs by cutting down on repeat offenders. But not everyone agrees that govern- ment concessions on legal aid funding can come through a change to public percep- tion, or that the system can be mended through innovation. Ontario's Criminal Lawyers' Association had long pressed the province's need for a better-funded system, yet got no traction until lawyers walked out in 2009. Their eight-month boycott of homicide and guns-and-gangs cases even- tually led to a promise to increase funding to the system to $280 million from $200 million, along with an incremental boost to the tariff level to $136 per hour by 2015. CLA past president Frank Addario, who led the association through most of the boycott, says a walkout was the only way to force government action. He notes over the past 25 years the government commis- sioned more than a dozen reports calling for an increase to the tariff, yet ignored each one. "Governments always tell you they don't respond to pressure; in fact the opposite is true. They don't like pressure, but pressure is the only thing they respond to. We applied pressure, we were an irri- tant, they responded." At the end of the day, says Addario, "the squeakiest wheel gets the grease." Although the Ontario boycott was ini- tially met with euphoria from lawyers in the province, anecdotal evidence sug- gests it may not have been a slam dunk after all. Weisz, a career-long member of the CLA who emphasizes his views don't necessarily reflect those of the association, says it appears LAO is providing fewer legal aid certificates since a second tariff boost took hold in April. That may also be due to a shortage in funds from lawyers' trust accounts, a portion of which is fun- nelled to LAO. Regardless, Weisz says the courts feel empty of lawyers and many of his colleagues have been forced to lay off support staff. It may be too soon to gauge the impact of the agreement, he says, but things don't look good early on. As part of its ongoing transforma- tion, LAO closed regional offices while redirecting certificate applicants online and to toll-free telephone numbers. The province's Justice on Target project aims to decrease the number of pretrial appear- ances, but Lou Strezos, who chairs the CLA's legal aid committee, told Law Times last month that CLA members say long waits for certificates are producing the opposite effect. "The effect of the closures is conflicting at some level with the goals set by the attorney general in terms of reducing front-end set-date appearances. Unfortunately, what currently appears to be happening is that there's increasing appearances while people wait. You see it first with people trying to get through to a person at legal aid, and then the approval process seems to be much longer." All told, Weisz says he's still enthusi- astic about criminal defence work. But the "sad truth" is that he wouldn't do it if he were entering the profession at this moment. "I don't think I could support myself," he says. But he knows plenty of young lawyers who are getting into the field despite the grim financial outlook. Many are forced to live and work out of bachelor apartments, renting an office a couple of days a week to meet with clients. They forego expenses that many view as mandatory — such as a secretary and library — in hopes of making ends meet doing the work they too love, without the mentorship and resources many believe they need to do it well. "It's something that is in a way wonder- ful because you see the dedication of the younger lawyers. It's also awful that they have to be treated like that," says Weisz. "That's what we've become. It's a sorry state of affairs." www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com OC T O BER 2010 33