INNOVATION IN FAMILY LAW
U of C to launch pilot project
Alberta’s economic woes and rising unemployment rate have triggered a rise in the number of people who cannot afford family law services in the province.
That will change when the University of Calgary opens its Family Law Incubator in late 2017.
Spearheaded by one of Calgary’s senior family law practitioners, Tony Young, the incubator’s ambitious goal is to be a centre of excellence and to offer a first-choice articling program for students interested in family law.
The incubator will also act as a pilot project that, once successful, can be implemented in other cities across Alberta or even Canada.
The new 2,000-square-foot open-concept office will run wireless and cloud-based systems and provide four articling jobs for law graduates.
In the second year of operation, there will be room to employ four first-year lawyers. Detailed curriculum and workflows will ensure students and staff undertake files in a consistent, structured and disciplined manner. Most uniquely, the articling students and new lawyers will also be trained in the business aspects of law.
“We’re going to create a new breed of reasonably priced lawyers who will drive further innovation in the delivery of family legal services,” Young said.
The incubator will operate in a mobile, paperless environment that will take advantage of all available technologies, he said.
There’s a shortage of family law lawyers in Alberta, but no shortage of qualified interested students, he said. “It’s not going to be for everyone. But it’ll be exciting for those who choose to do it and it’ll give them more disciplined, consistent and structured training.”
An important feature of the incubator is its mandate to be selfsufficient as soon as possible — so its legal services will not be free.
Its target clients are middle-class Canadians who earn too much income to obtain legal aid, but not enough to pay lawyers charging $500 per hour. All fees will be plowed back into the incubator.
Those involved in bringing the incubator to life include members of the Canada Research Institute for Family Law, the Law Society of Alberta, Calgary’s family law bar and the University of Calgary.
The incubator needs to hire a full-time family law lawyer to serve as executive director.
A search is nearly complete, but there is another regulatory hurdle. The incubator needs to be organized as an entity that the provincial law society is capable of regulating.
It turns out that a university law incubator is not “an entity that the law society currently regulates or permits,” Young explained.
“So we’re not only trying to be innovative with our approach to legal services, we’re also being innovative with the structure of the entity providing those legal services.”
Nonetheless, Young is confident the regulatory hurdle will soon be cleared in a manner that satisfies the Law Society of Alberta.
The incubator is clearly an idea whose time has come for Canadians in need of family law services.
It would therefore be a shame if it was stymied by slavish devotion to antiquated regulatory rules.