Confidential but Collaborative
One of the most important messages Assist delivers to the Alberta legal community is that we are independent from other organizations, in particular, the Law Society of Alberta. You may know that Assist is an incorporated society under the Societies Act and that we have an independent board of directors, and you may conclude that today’s blog will be a yawner. I hope that this won’t turn out to be true—but read on to find out!
But while we value our independence since it heightens our confidentiality (there is no communication channel between our professional psychologists and our regulator!), we also value the opportunity to work with peer organizations to communicate how we work together to provide support to the legal community.
This week is an excellent example of this: Assist participated in New Lawyer Welcome Events in both Calgary and Edmonton. And I want to raise awareness about collaborations like this so that everyone who is interested can attend. Missed the in-person events this week? You can sign up for the online presentation next Wednesday, August 28th.
So, who is a “New Lawyer?” Just as I feel that youth is a state of mind and not a number (since that number keeps creeping up on me!), being a New Lawyer can also be a state of mind. If you feel like you are new to the profession and have much more to learn than you already have in your toolkit, you may be a New Lawyer.
For those of us who are nearer the end of our legal careers than we are to the beginning, it behooves us to revisit experiences from our junior years to remain sensitive to the concerns new lawyers face. We all had bone-headed moments where we revealed our lack of knowledge and many of us recall cringe-worthy moments (like me taking notes at a meeting where everyone was talking about what I heard as “elengies” before realizing we were discussing Liquid Natural Gas, or LNGs.) We try to bury these memories so that our confidence is not utterly destroyed, but we need to remember where we came from and express solidarity and empathy with junior colleagues. Not knowing what we are doing is stressful! And the only thing worse than not knowing what we are doing is when other people know we don’t know what we are doing.
After a certain period of time—generally considered to be with 10 or 15 years of experience—we become comfortable with our judgment and our knowledge base. We can discern which things matter and which do not, and we move forward from our fear of recurring embarrassing moments.
Most of us would like to spare newcomers from the pain of learning the hard way. If only, we think, there was something that could be done for junior lawyers that would help them through these early days.
The National Study on the Psychological Health Determinants for Canadian Legal Professionals (the National Study) provided empirical data to support our memories or beliefs that being a new lawyer is stressful. The highest rates of psychological distress were found in lawyers in both the youngest age and least experienced bands. Three-quarters of legal professionals with less than three years of experience disclosed experiencing psychological distress.
In the 2019 Articling Student Survey conducted by the Law Societies of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, just over half of articling students and lawyers in their first five years of practice felt that they were only somewhat competent to practice law or not competent to practice law at the end of their articling year. We know that feeling incompetent (or perhaps not sufficiently competent) causes stress.
Organizations in the legal sector have been digesting the 380 pages of the National Study along with 43 pages of recommendations and considering how we can respond to areas of distress. Assist is party to some discussions, while others focus on areas outside of our mandate.
I was invited to attend a meeting with representatives of the Law Society, CBA-AB, Alberta Lawyers Indemnity Association and Legal Education Society of Alberta a few months ago where I learned that the Law Society and LESA were about to unroll an education package for new lawyers, called Practice Fundamentals. Assist, along with ALIA and CBA-AB, were invited to participate in a New Lawyer Welcome event, to be held in Calgary, Edmonton and online where each organization would explain its programs that support new lawyers. Needless to say, Assist was all in for this!
The Practice Fundamentals course aligns with the domains of our Continuing Professional Development program:
- Legal Practice
- Professional ethics and civility
- Lawyer-Client Relationships
- Practice and File Management
- Cultural Competency and EDI
- Truth and Reconciliation
- Well-Being
Since this is CPD Season, when all Alberta lawyers are required to submit their customized CPD Plan by October 1, 2024, lawyers of all vintages may want to consider whether the Practice Fundamentals course can address their identified development needs.
From what I learned from participating in the first two New Lawyer Welcome events this week, the Practice Fundamentals Course includes the following components:
- Drafting Effective Contracts (self-study)
- Drafting Effective Pleadings and Affidavits (self-study)
- Drafting Effective Memos and Letters (self-study)
- Introduction to the Code of Conduct (self-study)
- Effective Time and Email Management (recorded webinars)
The self-study modules are designed to be completed in about two hours. I am not sure if you can register for a single module, but I suspect that you probably have to register and pay for the whole course.
The Practice Fundamentals course is free for lawyers called in 2024. But lawyers who purchase the course will also receive:
- 25% off the subscription price for the LESA Library (an incredible resource collection that includes more than 1100 precedents along with copies of papers and conference materials)
- 5 free LESA on-demand courses and
- 25% off Practice Foundations Series on-demand programs (recordings from past programs designed for new lawyers).
This looks like a simple CPD solution in a nutshell!
If you are thinking about your CPD plan, especially if you are a new lawyer completing a CPD plan for the first time, remember that CBA-AB also offers a wide range of learning opportunities which can flesh out your CPD plan as well from section meetings to special events. Attending section meetings is a CPD activity, as is serving on a section executive and delivering an educational presentation. Please consider getting involved with CBA-AB both education and community benefits.
Please visit CBA to learn more about how you can enhance your continuing education generally, but there are a few special events this fall that you won’t want to miss:
- September 4, 2024: A conversation with SCC Justice Mahmud Jamal, and
- November 19, 2024: A chat with Alberta’s Chiefs featuring Chief Justice Khullar, Chief Justice Davidson and Chief Justice Hunter
(and if you like events featuring prominent Justices in Alberta, rumour has it that Assist’s Hand to Hand event will be well-attended in this regard….)
You may wonder why ALIA is participating in the New Lawyers Event—as lawyers, we tend to think of our indemnifier as a behind-the-scenes entity that we hope to never meet. But did you know that ALIA provides ALIA 101 sessions to law firms to help everyone understand both our obligations as an insured and how our insurer supports us. This could be a great CPD event for your firm! And all of the ALIA lawyers I have met are kind, helpful and caring—do not be intimidated by their jobs and please contact them if you have a question about our professional insurance program.
ALIA has a new website (https://alia.ca/) filled with information and resources. And for those of us who remember a very different time when copies of lawyers’ insurance policies were closely guarded, you can access a copy of our current policy and copies of policies going back to 2014.
Lawyers should read our insurance policy, and this can be a CPD Plan activity.
I am the anchor speaker at the New Lawyer Welcome events which gives me the opportunity to announce the names of prize winners—a truly fun opportunity since the prizes, donated by participating organizations, were great.
If you are sitting on the fence about attending the New Lawyer Welcome online event, perhaps the door prize draws will help you decide to register—but you have to be present to win a prize. Participants who won door prizes were very pleased with their prizes, and there is a very valuable grand prize that is awarded to one lucky attendee.
You can still register for the New Lawyer Welcome online event at noon on Wednesday, August 28th.
New lawyers—however you define yourself—are welcome to attend along with articling students, PREP students who are not yet articling, lawyers transferring from outside of Alberta, internationally trained lawyers who are not yet articling or registered for PREP.
I met many new lawyers, articling and PREP students, lawyers transferring from other provinces, and internationally trained lawyers who are working towards qualification at the end of the two in-person events, and I invited everyone to our Red Mug Coffee Circles (and other programs)—so on Monday, August 26th, we will be meeting some new friends who can we enfold in Assist’s caring community.
Events like the New Lawyer Welcome show how organizations in the legal support sector can collaborate together to wrap resources around a group of lawyers. Participants appreciated the session, and I appreciated meeting both the attendees and the presenters, so this type of event is a positive from Assist’s point of view.
But the existence of collaborations with other organizations in no way affects our independence or our commitment to confidentiality. Assist holds all personal information in confidence (subject to very narrow limitations involving risk of imminent harm to identifiable individuals), and we only discuss or divulge aggregate data with organizations with whom we collaborate.
Loraine