"What is the cost of not dealing with domestic violence?... Calculate the cost of the hospital visits, the lost employment, and then you compare that to the cost of legal fees." - Courtney Sarsiat, Articling student with the ECLC
The program was born out of an earlier Poverty Law Seminar developed by the Faculty's Professor Catherine Bell and Sessional Instructor Katherine Weaver in the late 1990's. In 2005, the two were part of a larger group of legal and policy experts that led to the establishment of Edmonton's first non-profit legal clinic: what is now the ECLC. Bell, Weaver and Debbie Klein then teamed up with Legal Aid Alberta, ECLC, and Student Legal Services to develop the current Low Income Individuals and the Law program.
Critically, students are also taught interviewing skills in order to deal empathetically, and effectively, with clients who may have negative perceptions about the law, or be too intimidated to speak freely. "It's more about how you ask the questions that get the information you need when you're dealing with clients who have extra barriers," Bell observes.
Next, students are placed in various non-profit legal clinics, where they spend a day a week working directly with low-income clients under a lawyer's supervision. In between, they meet at group seminars to share their experiences. More often than not, talk focuses on finding the right balance between social versus legal needs.
"One theme that's emerging this year is that sometimes the legal solution may not be the best solution for the client," says Bell. For example, a student may discover that it makes more sense to help a disabled client find appropriate community housing, than to take their landlord to court.
Back at the ECLC, primers on the walls guide volunteer lawyers, and the students they're supervising, through a host of legal issues that are complicated, if not created, by poverty. There are Bed Bugs in the Premises… My Employer is Withholding my Wages… and My Landlord Will not Maintain or Repair the Premises, are just a few.
Meanwhile, posters in the waiting room make it clear that clients often have problems that extending beyond the legal. Abuse is not Love reads an advertisement for the City of Edmonton Community Services. Another offers free pre-school programs for low-income families, and a third provides interpreters in two dozen languages.
"Sometimes they just need sympathy and to have their problems validated," Klein says frankly. However, where legal assistance is required, the lawyers and students provide expertise free of charge. "What I hear, almost universally from the students, is: this is why I went to law school: to feel like I am really helping." Klein says. Courtney Sarsiat is one of those students. A year ahead of Andress, she also did her placement at the Youth Criminal Defense Office, and managed to leverage the experience into an articling position with the ECLC. "When they offered the (poverty law) program I was pretty excited about it because that's what I always wanted to do with my law degree. But there aren't that many opportunities to get that experience," she says.
Today Sarsiat is working on an eviction case. It's relatively straightforward because her client has managed to scrape together enough funds for a hotel room, which means Sarsiat doesn't need to start work by finding him temporary shelter - a good thing as the cold outside her window is punishing.
Inside, her office is cramped but efficient. Indoor shoes and a yoga mat are crammed in one corner. There are three water bottles on her desk, along with a pamphlet titled Running Your First Trial. At first glance, it looks like an office typical of a young lawyer whose career is just underway.
But little about the way Sarsiat spends her days is typical. For one thing, she's become accustomed to practicing law alongside a team of outreach experts, in order to find creative solutions for her clients that address social, as well as legal, issues. Along the way, she's come face-to-face with the reality of life for many of Canada's poorest residents. She recalls one homeless client who was arrested during her time at the Youth Criminal Defense Office, and unable to get a bail hearing for a week. "(He) said: 'At least it's a warm place to stay and a bed for a week.' It's pretty sad to see someone who is 16 and would rather stay in jail."
Also unusual is the fact that Sarsiat appears before an array of tribunals and boards on behalf of clients - something that would normally be cost-prohibitive - because the lawyers mentoring her have learned that victories in such forums often have enormous impact on their clients' lives.
All of this experience has helped convince Sarsiat that she wants to build her career in poverty law. "It's not always the easiest clientele but they're usually very grateful for your help and you feel good at the end of the day. I don't need to focus on billable hours and all that; it's just focusing on the law and helping people," she says. "I would rather work at a job that I'm really happy at, than have a lot of money."
It's not that there aren't financial benefits that result from work with low-income clients, Weaver notes. It's just that they're benefits to society, rather than individual law firms-and Canada is only just beginning to figure out how to measure them.
"People are looking at what the social return on investment is when you're looking at access to legal services" For example, if a family is evicted from its home, there are measurable economic costs related to homelessness, lack of employment, or the fact that children may not be able to attend school. "What is the cost of not dealing with domestic violence?" she asks, giving another example. "Calculate the cost of the hospital visits, the lost employment, and then you compare that to the cost of legal services."
In other words, practicing law within a broader social context creates economic synergies that are far- reaching. Just as synergies are created when you match young law students with low-income clients, and then require those students to bring what they've learned back to the classroom. Connections are forged between individuals, the law school and society, and all are changed for the better.
Rhyannon O'Heron, a graduate of the program, recalls one experience that illustrates this point. During her articling year at the ECLC, she was assigned a complex case involving a young man from China who had come to Canada under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program.
The man's employer had charged him more than $6000 in fees for which he was not legally responsible; he had been forced to pay for air fare, a recruitment charge, fees for permanent residence applications, and a charge to renew his contract. Meanwhile, the employer also underpaid him, forcing him to work long hours at an illegal hourly rate, without overtime. When even those meager pay cheques started to bounce, the man threatened to tell the government, at which point he was fired.
"The work permit ties you to an employer. So when the employer fired him, he was unemployed with no prospects of work," O'Heron recalls.
By the time he arrived at the ECLC, the man was "destitute" and surviving because of food banks. Working with an interpreter over the course of a year, she and senior lawyers were able to win a judgment in his favour. Unfortunately, by the time it came through, the man had been diagnosed with cancer and had decided to return to his family in China.
At this point, something happened that will make O'Heron remember this particular case for the rest of her life.
"He didn't know whether he had months to live, or years to live, but he felt that once he was back in China he wouldn't need the money," she says. "He was very adamant that he wanted to give this money back to help other people who needed it, who were in the same situation.
And so he assigned the judgment - $20,000 - back to the ECLC.
"Everyone was so touched by it. He had so little, and was just generous and very selfless," O'Heron says. "It makes you think about humanity and the way people treat each other,"
It's also compelling evidence that training young lawyers in poverty law puts in motion an extraordinary cycle of benefits: for clients, lawyers, and society.