L.P.I. delivers affordable justice
L.P.I. delivers affordable justice
Sometimes L.P.I.’s dedication to providing Canadians with affordable justice is best illustrated by comparison with major media reporting on the issue.
When the mainstream media investigates Access to Justice it always seems to lay the blame for the lack of access to justice at the feet of legal practitioners.
Last year, for example, The Toronto Star, in an article dated August 12, 2007, by Tracey Tyler, the Star’s Legal Affairs Reporter, dealing with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Barbara McLachlin’s speech to a convention of the Canadian Bar Association and her call-to-action to governments, lawyers and judges to find solutions to the access-to-justice crisis in Canada, contained the following paragraphs.
A Toronto Star investigation this year determined the cost of a routine three-day civil trial in Ontario to be about $60,000, more than the median Canadian family income.
The article went on to note that “While high hourly-rates charged by lawyers are part of the difficulty (up to $800 an hour in Toronto) the access to justice problem is complicated.”
The content of the two paragraphs cited above set the tone of the article and reinforce the publicly held view that contacting and using a lawyer is too expensive. This view discourages many Canadians from seeking legal assistance and contributes to the growing issue of Canadians resorting to self-representation in Canadian courts.
Granted, other comments and quotations buried in the body of the article noted that in part, the increasing costs of access-to-justice is attributable to the increasingly complex judicial system and the chronic shortages of court staffing, including judicial appointments, all causing costly time delays. These observations however were positioned so as not to detract from the Star’s primary objective, which was to target the costs associated with practicing lawyers.
We made two subsequent attempts to contact the Toronto Star and the reporter by e-mail to suggest that the Star at least take a closer look at the quality of their “investigation”. These attempts to get a response have gone unanswered.
The Star and most other Canadian major media outlets’ priorities are on grabbing headlines, not helping Canadians access justice. In our opinion, the Star “investigation” probably involved getting a trial cost quote from one or two downtown corporate law firms.
The reality is that for most of the legal services that Canadians need, a lawyers fee rates are not a significant restraint, unless, of course, they are consulting a downtown corporate Toronto lawyer, most of whom do not do personal law.
For example, following the publishing of the above Star article I asked a quality, experienced locally (GTA) based legal practitioner who is part of L.P.I.’s Canada-wide Legal Referral Network to quote on a “routine three-day trial in Toronto”.
His quote, based on L.P.I.’s pre-contracted agreement and including reasonable pre-trial preparation costs came back as between $10,000 and $12,500; i.e. about 80% lower than the cost cited in the Toronto Star article.
We have also learned from our experience in recruiting legal network participation and consulting widely with Canadian law firms when negotiating L.P.I. legal fee rates, that most lawyers practicing personal law actually deliver legal services at affordable rates in their local communities. Commercial survival today makes this a reality.
It is time that Canada’s legal institutions, governments and mass media leaders recognize publically that these lawyers are the foundation of any effort to assure access to justice for all Canadians.
Rather than encouraging more pro-bona work, Canada’s legal establishment should aggressively challenge media positioning on the issue when appropriate, and focus on the most serious impediments to access to justice, weak administration, too much bureaucracy and a shortage of judicial personnel.