These are very cogent points, Nancy, and I share your concerns about
availability. Since neither the US nor Canada seems to have the will to
make free/low cost legal services broadly available (from experienced
lawyers) as is done in Ireland and UK, we do have the problem of relatively
new lawyers being the main resource for clients of limited means. I'd
accept that it is a question of not taking on cases beyond one's ability---
as a theoretical proposition, but as a practical matter, I think clients
with complex matters are likely to end up with inexperienced counsel if
there is no attention paid to the question of experience. I am not
advocating 5 or any other fixed number of years. But I have difficulty
being positive about a practice group list that presents both experienced
and completely inexperienced collaborative lawyers on an indistinguishable
footing without some way of helping clients understand the differences in
what is brought to the table. And frankly I think figuring out how to do
that appropriately and effectively is a lot harder than having a years-based
membership rule. It would be easy to make a legal services exception, but
much harder with a general population. Clients often don't recognize the
complexity of their own situations--indeed, even very experienced lawyers
can find themselves in deep waters in matters that looked quite
straightforward at the start. If there is not an experience requirement
then I think it is incumbent on the practice group to figure out other
effective and manageable ways of encouraging and ensuring quality of service
delivery. Not an easy matter even to discuss, much less implement. . . .
On 6/5/06, Nancy Cameron <ncameron@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This is a great debate, and I'm going to jump in to respond to Pauline's
points. The problem that I have with the "what would I recommend to my
sister or best friend" test is this: here in Vancouver (and I don't think
we
are that different from other places) the more experienced (which often
means, the better) lawyers are more expensive. If my sister (or best
friend)
could only afford to pay $200 an hour, would I rather send her to a junior
lawyer that was committed to collaborative practice or would I rather send
her to a junior lawyer that was not committed to collaborative practice.
Or
a junior lawyer that told my sister that he graduated from law school
wanting to practice collaboratively but couldn't offer her that service
because his local practice group wouldn't allow him to join. I also
believe
in calling a spade a spade, and as long as we insist on a "number of years
of practice" requirement I believe that we are potentially setting up
collaborative practice as a model that is financially available to a
smaller, more elite group. It would be almost impossible to set it up as a
legal aid model, as many legal aid lawyers are lawyers with only a few
years
out of law school. Of course we want to strive for highly skilled
collaborative practitioners, but I don't believe the best way to do this
is
with a number of years ofpractice requirement. I think the "complex case"
scenarios that Pauline raises are matters of a lawyer (collaboratively
trained or not) taking on a case beyond his or her skill level. This can
happen in collaborative cases and in non-collaborative cases. Is a policy
that excludes junior lawyers (or other professionals) from joining
collaborative groups the best way to handle the question of lawyers (or
other professionals) taking on cases beyond their skill level?
Nancy Cameron, Q.C.
201-111 Water Street
Vancouver, B.C.
V6B 1A7
phone: 604-689-1766
fax: 604-689-1760
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