Edmonton Community Legal Centre
As a Donner Civic Leadership Fund Fellow, I have had the opportunity to spend the summer working with an organization for which I have the highest level of respect, the Edmonton Community Legal Centre.
The Edmonton Community Legal Centre (ECLC) provides free legal services in the areas of civil and administrative law to people living with low income in the Edmonton area. The ECLC seeks to reduce the systematic and economic barriers that prevent individuals and families from participating in the justice system by providing legal advice, representation, income support advocacy and public legal education. While the Edmonton Community Legal Centre helps individuals with legal problems in a variety of areas, the largest number of its cases concern landlord and tenant law, an area of pressing importance in Alberta today. The combination of rapid population growth and a lack of commitment to social services on the part of the government have contributed to a serious shortage of affordable housing in the province, and the ECLC is the foremost Edmonton organization providing legal support to the many local tenants in need of assistance.
I have been working on several different research projects this summer under the supervision of our Executive Director. The first project involved doing research on the need for a tenant duty counsel program. The research component is now complete and the ECLC is moving forward with its proposal for funding, hopeful that a new position will be created by some point next year. As an ongoing project, I have also been working on developing accessible public legal education tools for existing and potential clients. To this end, I have been working on developing numerous tip sheets and gathering legal links to improve the ECLC's website. I have also been looking at the kinds of resources and services that need to be developed to ensure that newly arrived immigrants are able to meaningfully participate in the legal system.
While I have enjoyed working with the Executive Director on the research projects outlined above, I have also been fortunate enough to gain hands-on experience in various aspects of client management and litigation preparation by working closely with our Staff Lawyer. Some of my daily activities have included drafting letters to clients and opposing counsel, summarizing files and writing memorandums outlining what steps need to be taken, doing case law research on the Residential Tenancies Act and the Employment Standards Code, interviewing clients, drafting civil claims and affidavits, doing searches at the courthouse and the Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Service (RTDRS), and speaking with the clerks at the courthouse to get procedural instructions. I have also called witnesses to prepare them for hearings at the RTDRS, researched the process by which victims of government-sponsored sterilization can be compensated, and spoken to Alberta Blue Cross on behalf of clients whose disability benefits have been cut off.
I have attended several hearings alongside the Staff Lawyer and have actively participated in file review every Wednesday and Thursday along with the Staff Lawyer, the Outreach Worker, the Volunteer Coordinator, and the Intake Coordinator. Taking part in file review has allowed me to learn about each and every file that comes through our evening clinics, has helped me to understand why the ECLC takes on the files it does, and has allowed me to better understand the interplay between the legal and outreach aspects of the ECLC.
I have enjoyed each day of my placement to date and have learned a great deal from the dedicated and enthusiastic staff who I have been working with. My summer spent with the ECLC has definitely cemented my commitment to pursuing a career in poverty law.
