In-Person Participation Requirement:
Participation in a DLS clinical program involves a mix of activities including seminars, research & writing, client work, public legal education and community outreach. Students are expected to available for clinic work Monday - Thursday during regular business hours and be available to work remotely on Fridays. Please note from students in this course may have to attend the clinic in-person on occasional Fridays to meet with clients and perform other clinical work if the work is urgent and cannot be completed virtually. Students will also be required to represent clients in live proceedings at courts and tribunals as well as deliver public legal education and engage in community outreach at locations accessible by transit in the City of Toronto. Should you have any questions or concerns about this in-person participation requirement, please contact us at law.dls@utoronto.ca.
Schedule: Weekly seminar (Wednesdays 2:10-4:00 pm) plus a mandatory Joint Clinic Professionalism Training on (Date TBD).
Enrollment Notes: This course does not require an application. Enrollment in all the clinics for credit is limited to upper year students. Exchange Students are not eligible to participate in clinics.
Enrolling in a DLS clinic is a serious commitment. Once enrolment is confirmed, students will require permission from the Faculty to withdraw.
Course Description:
This part-time, full-year clinical education program offers students the opportunity to explore legal principles and social policy issues in an empirical, public interest context. The program challenges students to examine issues with respect to the many intersections of law and social inequality in a critical way, while at the same time allowing them to develop the professional and ethical literacy which is essential to the practice of law. Through their clinical work, individualized tutorials, substantive training sessions and course seminars, students are provided with the chance to test relationships between legal rules and the realities of the justice process, to investigate the complex legal problems and policy issues which affect low-income communities, and to develop a conceptual and empirical understanding of public interest lawyering.
Worldwide, there is a strong correlation between disability, economic marginalization, and social exclusion. Disability compounds every other category of personal disadvantage, and there is vital work for the legal system in removing the barriers that prevent persons with disabilities from taking part fully in society.
Students in the Disability, Health, and Income Security division will provide services to people who occupy the intersection of disability and poverty. This includes both people who identify as having an existing disability, and people who are marginalized in their dealings with the entities that govern health care, informed consent, future planning, and medical privacy.
Students will represent clients before the Social Benefits Tribunal in applications for disability benefits and in appeals of benefit clawbacks. They will represent low-income clients seeking compensation before the Human Rights Tribunal for disparate treatment, and advise low-income clients about health care consent, substitute decision-making, Powers of Attorney, and adult adoption. The casework will include client counseling; case theory formulation; evidence gathering; drafting applications and legal submissions; preparing for hearings; participation in mediation sessions; litigation strategy; negotiating with opposing counsel; and conducting hearings.
In their outreach activities, students will advocate for systemic change around inequities and barriers in the legal system for persons with disabilities, and, in particular, the disparities between low-income and high-income persons with disabilities around access to benefits, future planning, and other determinants of well-being.
Students will gain experience in the intersecting areas of law that bear on the legal rights and full social inclusion of persons with disabilities, and those who struggle to access health equity. They will develop an appreciation of the interdisciplinary nature of the field and the major issues which it engages, from public accessibility standards and supported/substitute decision-making to bioethics and medical assistance in dying. The law of income security draws mainly on administrative concepts of statutory interpretation and procedural fairness, but intersects with constitutional and human rights law. Students will explore the policies underlying social assistance and pensions which cause or contribute to poverty among equity-seeking groups, especially persons with disabilities.
Suggested Pre or Co-Requisites: Health Law and Bioethics, Administrative Law, Evidence Law.
The program is conducted at Downtown Legal Services, a community legal clinic operated by the Faculty of Law which provides services to low-income people in a number of areas of law. In addition to the casework described above, students will participate in weekly education sessions throughout the term. These sessions will include substantive legal training, case rounds and multi-disciplinary seminars. Credit students are also required to participate in the clinic’s community outreach program and to write a series of short reflective papers.
Commitment:
While we strive to make the overall workload of the clinic comparable to a course of similar weight, the clinic involves real case work, with deadlines that are not always within our control. It also involves serious commitments to clients who are dealing with significant legal issues. In this sense, the clinic requires a commitment beyond what is normally expected in an academic seminar. The credit weighting of this course is designed to reflect this additional commitment.
Participation in all seminars and training sessions is mandatory. In addition to the weekly seminar, students are required to be in regular contact with the clinic to monitor developments on their files and to commit to a 2-hour weekly “office hours” shift during which time they will be available to receive client calls (these calls can be received remotely). Students should expect that their clinic work will often require additional time over and above this block.
