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Practising law in a different way regional wrap-up CENTRAL A s if legalese wasn't bad enough in English, Quebecers oſten have to deal with it in both official lan- guages. But help in putting that jargon into layman's terms is only a click away for the uninitiated thanks to Éducaloi and its increasingly popular web site www. educaloi.qc.ca that averages 1.5 million hits a year. "We're more than a web site She was a 2006 recipient of an Arista- BMO Bank of Montreal award recognizing her as the province's top young, socially responsible business leader. Roy recalls getting the idea for Éducaloi while she was assistant to the Bâtonnier du Québec from 1997 to 2000. Preoccupied about the problem of access to justice since earn- ing her law degree at the Université de Montréal in 1989, Roy leſt the Barreau du Québec and hired Fortin to join her in forming and running Éducaloi. They now have a staff of 18 that includes 13 fellow lawyers. "It's a very diversified team," she tells Canadian Lawyer. "You have to be general jurists [to cover so many areas of law] and we get to work in collaboration with all kinds of experts." Fortin, who has degrees in both law though, we are also on the ground," notes Nathalie Roy, Éducaloi co-founder and executive director. "We have a panoply of activities." What she calls "a marriage of commu- nication and law," Éducaloi has developed a recognized expertise since its March 2000 launch in producing and dispens- ing legal information to members of the public and specific groups that is effective, clear, and easy to understand. It offers a more human touch by inte- grating the principles of readability and plain language in its communication tools to encourage greater awareness of the law and ensure a better understanding of the judicial system. Geneviève Fortin, the other co- founder and assistant executive director, concedes running a bilingual service is "a colossal challenge and expensive." Roy says it isn't simply a matter of translation: "We have to keep information up-to-date with two jurists responsi- ble for updating the site in French and English daily." and communications, says the non-profit organization, which has an annual operat- ing budget of approximately $1.6 million, continues to further expand access to information to the aged, youths, profes- sionals, and entrepreneurs. An example is a guide they devel- oped that offers legal information to English-speaking parents undergoing separation or divorce and to the profes- sionals who work with those parents. The project featured four information sessions, two of which were broadcast by videoconference to isolated regions of the province. "We developed different ways of communicating," Roy says. "All of us here have chosen to practise law in a different way." It appears to be working according to a survey conducted earlier in the year that showed 80 per cent of respondents were very satisfied with the results. The same poll found that 70 per cent of Édu- caloi users are women and three quarters of visitors consult it for personal use. — MIKE KING mking@videotron.ca QUEBEC ADOPTS ANTI-SLAPP LAW I t took three years, but the Quebec government has taken some sting away from SLAPPs with new legislation. On June 3, the National Assembly unanimously adopted Bill 9, the prov- ince's new law to deal with "strategy lawsuits against public participation." British Columbia is the only other prov- ince with such an anti-SLAPP law. Justice Minister Kathleen Weil pointed out she was the third min- ister to handle the matter since 2006, when Yvon Marcoux appointed McGill University law profes- sor Roderick Macdonald to head a panel of experts to determine a solution. One year later, Macdonald recommended either adopting new legislation or amending the Code of Civil Procedure. Jacques Dupuis, Weil's predeces- sor and successor to Marcoux, saw his proposed bill 99 die on the order paper in 2007. Two changes were made to bill 99 to come up with Bill 9 — a judge is now allowed to take account of the new law in legal actions already before the courts (there are about half a dozen launched in Quebec) and defendants are permitted to claim legal costs. Bill 9 mirrors article 75.1 of the civil code, which states a judge can dismiss a proceeding if he or she finds it is frivolous. —MK www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com SEPTEMBER 2009 9