Many law schools set up specialized clinics to respond to specific needs in their communities.
Through these clinics, students provide public legal information, advice, and representation, all supervised by lawyers. These clinics are supported by the law schools and Legal Aid Ontario, and the close to $2-million in funding provided by The Law Foundation of Ontario to Ontario’s law schools.
Western Law’s Community Legal Services, in partnership with Pro Bono Students Canada and Community Law School (Sarnia-Lambton), created the Eviction Prevention Program (EPP) as a direct response to students and community members coming to them in desperate situations, often facing homelessness.
Since the EPP began in 2012, five to eight students have assisted about 20 tenants per year. Approximately 90 per cent of these tenants are able to settle with the assistance of the students. Under the direction of clinic lawyers, the students help their clients understand their legal rights, negotiate with landlords, and provide representation at the Landlord and Tenant Board.
“Thanks to funding from The Law Foundation of Ontario, Western Law is able to improve access to justice and other services within London and the surrounding community,” said Western Law Dean Erika Chamberlain.
“Programs like this also ensure the next generation of lawyers appreciate the serving nature of our profession.” Using the law to help people uphold their rights is important to Annie Legate-Wolfe, JD’18, who was an EPP team leader and student supervisor at the clinic. In her role to date, she has successfully negotiated to have all of her EPP clients remain within their rentals, if they chose to do so.
“I feel a lot of satisfaction in knowing people have been able to exercise their rights and they’re not just faced with a piece of paper that says, ‘You have to leave in 10 days’ and so they do.”
She explains there are many reasons a person may face eviction, such as late rent payments, too many people in a unit, or alleged criminal acts. Sometimes the reason is a lack of understanding between tenants and landlords. That was the case with one of her files last summer.
“I had clients who were deaf and they were refugees who didn’t speak English. They would get the notices dropped off but they couldn’t read them. They thought they were flyers,” recalled Legate-Wolfe.
“To talk to my client, I spoke to a sign language interpreter and the sign language interpreter talked to a deaf interpreter because they’re two different languages. I was able to show the landlord that they wanted to comply, they just didn’t understand. It was a challenge, but it was so satisfying knowing I was able to prevent them from being evicted,” she said. “At the end of it all, the client wrote me a card in English and it said, ‘Thank you for helping me keep my home’. That was really rewarding.”
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