Fri 30 Jun 2017
Family Unbundled Legal Services Project Update
Posted by Heverton.Oliveira
The Mediate BC Family Unbundled Legal Services project will be winding up at the end of June.
We are working to pass the baton on this exciting initiative to other interested stakeholders, primarily the Courthouse Library Society of BC, Access to Justice BC and the Canadian Bar Association BC Branch. These three, plus the Law Society of BC, the BC Judiciary, the Ministry of Justice, the Law Foundation and others have provided significant leadership, input and support for unbundling over the past year and their continuing efforts will be critical to shepherd this initiative into the future. Thank you!
This is a good opportunity to provide a brief update about the status of the initiative.
First, we are very pleased to advise that on Saturday the CBABC Provincial Council approved the proposal to form a new provincial Unbundled Legal Services Section! We believe that this is the first such section / group in Canada and we are grateful for the CBABC in leading the way in this important initiative! While the section will begin with a focus on family unbundled legal services the intention is that it will service unbundled services in all practice areas. The toolkit materials were created, as much as possible, to be easily adaptable to other areas.
A special thanks to Zahra Jimale who spoke to the resolution on Saturday and who has also agreed to act as the first Chair of the section.
Work is underway to plan a 2017/18 meeting schedule, topics and speakers. Given the provincial nature of this section all meetings will be fully accessible using appropriate technology.
The Executive Officers for the section will be:
- Chair: Zahra Jimale
- Treasurer: Zahra Jenab
- Secretary: Laura Atkinson
- Members at large:
- Robert Gunnarsson
- Michael Butterfield
- Polina Furtula
- Sonali Sharma
- Rizwana Choudry
- Kari Boyle
This section is open to all CBABC members. This might be a good time to renew your membership! If you are not yet a CBABC member we will continue to work through the toolkit and otherwise to help you meet your needs for collegiality, peer support, sharing of materials etc. Your thoughts and ideas will be appreciated!
On June 20th, Carol Hickman QC, Jennifer Muller and Kari Boyle led a discussion about unbundling with the Supreme Court Judiciary in Vancouver (with video and telephone links to other locations). Given the increasing number of self-represented litigants in Supreme Court, participants were very interested in learning more about unbundling and provided many excellent comments and suggestions. A brochure explaining unbundling with a link to the Roster is in process.
The Provincial Court website already links to the Roster in numerous places. Chief Justice Bauman has been a strong supporter of unbundling and hosted a Law at Lunch seminar for Court of Appeal Justices in January.
One last note – the external evaluation of the Mediate BC Family Unbundled Legal Services Project will be completed by the end of this month and the evaluation report will be available in July. Many thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in surveys or interviews to support this evaluation.
Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions: kari.boyle@shaw.ca.
Stay tuned for more information!
Kari D. Boyle is the BC Family Unbundling Roster Project Manager. She is also the Coordinator of the BC Family Justice Innovation Lab, a Knowledge Engineer with the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal, Board member of the Courthouse Library Society of BC and member of Access to Justice BC. Kari served as Mediate BC's Executive Director and then Director of Strategic Initiatives for ten years. She enjoys using her legal, mediation and leadership experience to collaborate with others to improve BC citizens' access to justice.
Photo by London Scout on Unsplash
