Canadian Lawyer - sample

28 N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 7 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m Coast Environmental Law Association. Doelle points out a fun- damental problem: There is rarely any individual or organization that has a self-interest in protecting Mother Nature, a key gap in an adversarial system. "With many other social issues, there are organizations or individuals that have lots of money, on both sides," Doelle says. "When it comes to environmental issues, that often isn't the case." So, why do these lawyers do it? It can't be for the much-lower- than-average pay, the long hours, the burnout, the complex litiga- tion files fought against lavishly funded opponents, not to mention the need for constant outreach to maintain the trickle of financial support from government, private donors and the ever-shrinking resources of law society foundations. Like all of the litigators inter- viewed for this article, McClenaghan points to early childhood experiences. "My father worked at TransCanada pipelines," she explains. "I grew up on pipeline compressor stations all across the country. So we lived in, basically, the wilderness in northern Ontario and the Prairies, and I was very devoted to the outdoors." By the time McClenaghan reached university, she was committed to working in environmental protection. But initially, law was not part of the plan. It was while complet- ing an undergraduate science degree that McClenaghan began to think that a legal education could provide powerful tools to fight the battles she saw ahead. A preference for litigation showed itself early, and McClenaghan focused as much of her training as pos- sible on courtroom skills and environmentally related subject areas in the early '80s, when there were very few dedicated environment- al law programs at Canadian law schools. "I made my own specialty," she recalls. "So, if I did property law, I made my paper about water rights. In legal history, I made my paper about indigenous treaties and land rights. In international business transactions, I made my paper about natural gas exports from Russia, which were under a ban at the time." McClenaghan spent several years in a private general litigation practice, partly for family reasons, and finally joined CELA full time in 1998. She has been the group's executive director since 2007. During her 25-year career as an environmental law litiga- tor, McClenaghan has acted on files ranging from the mid-1990s Walkerton Inquiry into tainted drinking water, which garnered international attention and led to tough new legislation in Ontario, to matters dealing with pesticides, green energy, air quality and, more recently, the safety of nuclear power plants and radioactive nuclear waste disposal. But while pursuing their work on substantive environmental issues, lawyers at these non-profits often get pulled off into many other energy-sucking functions. Too often, they find themselves spending huge chunks of their time, sometimes 40 to 50 per cent, depending on the organization, performing tasks not directly relat- ed to their legal work. Those activities can include public speaking and fundraising, community outreach, media enquiries on break- ing news, lengthy grant applications and education. The latter might even include vetting the pleadings of private sector lawyers who require assistance, for instance, with drafting documents for plaintiffs in a class action. Jessica Clogg, executive director and senior counsel at West Coast Environmental Law in Vancouver, laughs a little when asked whether so many competing demands can create a fed-up feeling at times. "Sometimes, the scale of the challenge can feel large. You may work very, very hard and there still may not be the time or the resources to do everything that you think could be helpful," she says. "But, no, I don't get fed up. There's still too much work to do." Clogg, a 22-year veteran of WCEL, set her sights on her current profession while growing up in a wilderness area near Mission, B.C. She recalls her childhood distress at the clear-cutting forestry practices then carried out in the area, the resulting erosion and flooding and the limited ability of First Nations communities to make their voices heard. By chance, at 15, she heard a lawyer from an international committee speak on the issue, a spark that even- tually led her to Osgoode Hall Law School at York University and a joint masters/LLB in law and environmental studies. Looking back on her early passion for social change and her teenage conclusion that law was the way to achieve it, she is rueful: "I sometimes say I was still in tie dye when I hit law school." On top of all this, the work is likely to be subjected to sudden, often probing public attention. Clogg recalls the abrupt onset of media demands when the government of former prime minister Jessica Clogg, executive director and senior counsel at West Coast Environmental Law in Vancouver 'Sometimes, the scale of the challenge can feel large. You may work very, very hard and there still may not be the time or the resources to do everything that you think could be helpful.'

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