2.0 Executive Summary

Legal clinics in Canada may provide a variety of services, the most usual being free legal information, summary advice, coaching, and representation to low-income clients who meet certain eligibility criteria. Although one or more of these core services may exist in any given clinic, there is no national mandated model of service (in terms of either type or extent of service) for clinics in Canada. This study describes legal clinics in the country concerning funding and delivery models, profiles of clients and their legal needs, data collection, and measures put in place to serve clients in the context of COVID-19. Three methodologies explore the similarities and differences across the country: a literature review, an on-line scan of clinics, and interviews with key informants in all 13 jurisdictions.

Literature review

The literature review explores typologies of legal clinics, their key philosophies, the primary types of issues and outcomes, service gaps, and the impacts of COVID-19. The clinic model that is most characteristic of clinics described in this study is what Noreau and Pasca call the “juridical counter model” (Noreau and Pasca, 2014: 313)Footnote 1. As described by Abramowicz (2004:73), the community legal clinic characteristics of local community governance, poverty law practice and a broad array of services are critical elements in Ontario. They evolved from recommendations in the 1974 Osler report, and they were given strong provincial and local support. These elements are less consistently developed as a provincial system in other jurisdictions, which have lacked the same high-level impetus.

Legal clinics rarely measure outcomes in a highly developed way. There also tends to be less service reaching rural areas, and a lack of overall funding to develop strategic activities and test cases related to poverty law. The COVID-19 pandemic affected almost every area of law, but labour and employment law are considered the most strongly affected.

Scan and description of clinics in each jurisdiction

Section 5.2 of the report contains a summary of legal clinic structures in Canada, based on the matrices for each of the 13 Canadian jurisdictions in section 8.0. These matrices present data on legal clinic funders, the primary legal focus, the number of clinics, their settings and sub-categories of issues, the extent of service, governance structures, pre-COVID-19 delivery models and adaptations as a result of the pandemic. The matrices show that:

Key Informant Interviews

Semi-structured interviews were conducted by telephone or video conference with 24 respondents drawn from all 13 jurisdictions. Several of the themes derived from the matrices and summarized above were also confirmed in these interviews (e.g., concerning who funds the clinics in the jurisdiction). Other themes include: