Our final episode for this season focuses on the campaign to ban the misuse of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) being led by Dr. Julie Macfarlane and Zelda Perkins. Named “Can’t Buy My Silence,” Julie and Zelda’s campaign aims to bring new law into effect in both Canada and the UK to stop victims being forced to exchange their own privacy for prote…

In today’s episode, Julie talks to Bernie Mayer and Jackie Font-Guzmán about the ideas they explore in their new book, The Neutrality Trap: Disrupting and Connecting for Social Change (Wiley, 2022).Two long-time mediators and mediation teachers, Bernie and Jackie describe their growing disillusionment with the way mediation is sometimes offered to …

The vast majority of self-represented litigants cannot afford full representation in legal services – and yet most of them are continuing to search for assistance that is affordable to them. In this episode, Julie speaks with Marcus Sixta, of CrossRoads Law, about his pioneering legal coaching practice, Coach My Case. Marcus is a leading innovator …

Since the murder of George Floyd and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement there has been a new focus on the development of anti-Black racism training, and education on the impact of racism on our lives, relationships, and beliefs. Moya McAlister and Siddika Jessa are both creating workshops and safe spaces for conversation and education…

This week Julie talks with our new Executive Director, Jennifer Leitch! You can read more about Jennifer on our website, including Moya McAlister’s blog interview with her. That post, as well as today’s episode, delves into why Jennifer made the radical career switch from commercial litigator with a big Bay Street law firm to Access to Justice advo…

Following the recent Ontario decision in Ahluwalia, which established a new tort of family violence, this episode explores the work of two women and two organizations working to try to protect victims of violence. Deepa Mattoo, Executive Director of the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic in Toronto, speaks to Julie about what the Clinic does to s…

Ilana Luther is the Director of our newest chapter, NSRLP East, based in the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University in Halifax. NSRLP East has been in existence for just under a year, but has already achieved a lot (check out their website!) and is reaching out to SRLs across Atlantic Canada in order to highlight their particular issues and c…

This episode of Jumping Off the Ivory Tower features Julie’s conversation with Teresa Donnelly, the Treasurer of the Law Society of Ontario and the leader of Ontario’s legal profession elected by its “Convocation” or parliament.Teresa has a background as a prosecutor with the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, where she was a member of the S…

Welcome to season 7 of Jumping Off the Ivory Tower! For our season opener, (and our 75th episode!) we’re featuring a conversation with three Law Practice Program candidates – “almost” lawyers – who, along with their classmates, participated in two extended sessions with a group of almost 20 self-represented litigants in the fall of 2021. This was N…

Today’s season finale was a labour of love! Working with guests ages 4 and up is, well, challenging, for both interviewer (Julie) and production editor (Brauntë). But it was well worth it!For this episode, Julie talked with Ryann, Quinlan, Ava, Wyatt, Ezzo, and Jennah (occasionally interrupted by younger sister Emma), along with their moms (who we …

Today’s podcast focuses on the experiences of people with cognitive disabilities (PWCD) who are trying to navigate the courts without a lawyer. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have heard increasingly from SRLs with cognitive disabilities about their lack of accommodation from the courts. It seemed that the accommodation processes in place –…

Today’s episode explores how men and women can talk – really talk – about how society confronts the extraordinary predominance of male-on-female sexual violence (which studies consistently show accounts for over 90% of sexual abuse, assault, and harassment).The first conversation features Neville McKay and Phillip Hart talking to Julie about their …

Trevor Farrow is a well-known Access to Justice advocate and researcher who has been pushing forward system change in the justice system via the Canadian Civil Justice Forum, which he heads. Randi Druzin is an author and freelance journalist, who has had her own self-represented litigant journey, and is a passionate advocate for system change. Thei…

Zelda Perkins exploded into public view in 2017, the first woman to break a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) signed with Harvey Weinstein decades earlier. Zelda worked as a Production Assistant for Miramax and for several years worked directly with Harvey Weinstein on his film projects. Zelda describes signing the non-disclosure agreement in her earl…

Today’s episode features the story of a family self-represented litigant, who was originally represented by two different lawyers. She spent $20,000 on her first lawyer – resolving an uncontentious custody issue – but made no progress toward child support or division of assets. The second lawyer cost her another $25,000 – and still didn’t resolve c…

On today’s episode Julie talks to Heather Savigny, formerly Professor of Gender Studies at De Montfort University in Leicester in the United Kingdom. Heather supported a student – whom she had witnessed being sexually harassed by a male faculty member at a departmental social – in bringing a complaint. The result was not what Heather expected: she …

Lisa Trabucco is an Assistant Professor at Windsor Law, with a special interest in access to justice and paralegals. In this week’s episode, Julie talks to Lisa about her just-completed doctoral dissertation, “The Regulation of Paralegals in Ontario: Increased Access to Justice?” Lisa’s study explored the work of paralegal representatives at the Wo…

Working with a lawyer for the first time is an intimidating experience, especially because for most of us it is a final resort in a stressful conflict. Some of these “first time” experiences are better than others, of course, but a disappointing number of people report that they felt not-well-listened-to and that their lawyer was working from a wel…

Today’s podcast focuses on the remarkable campaigns of two women police officers (one of whom has now left the force) who have told the police departments in Waterloo and Windsor, Ontario, “you need to be accountable to your employees and to the public for your mistakes.” Kelly Donovan spoke up about what she saw as abuse of power in internal inves…

NSRLP has begun working with several administrative tribunals to assist them in adapting their systems and skills to the volume of self-represented litigants they see each year.Today’s podcast features leaders at two federal Tribunals who are committed to improving meaningful access for self-reps, who make up 35-70% of litigants appearing at their …

Welcome to season 6! Our guest today is Jennifer Muller, who was the subject of our very first (and very popular) podcast episode, “It Couldn’t Happen to Me,” in September 2017, when she described running out of funds and being forced to represent herself in a custody trial in 2009. (https://representingyourselfcanada.com/it-couldnt-happen-to-me/)I…

Janice's self-represented litigant story is one in thousands that we've heard. Please consider donating to NSRLP this holiday season, and help us reach our end-of-year goal of $5000, so that we can continue to put out research and resources to help self-reps, and advocate for practical, meaningful access to justice in the legal system. Visit repres…

JOIT is still on hiatus (look for season 6 to begin in early 2021!), but we’re releasing this special episode to explore Julie’s incredible new book, Going Public: A Survivor’s Journey from Grief to Action, which documents her experiences of sexual violence as a young woman, and her search for justice in the legal system. In the episode, Julie read…

Today’s episode is dedicated to the personal experiences of two good friends of NSRLP who speak to what it meant for them to grow up as Black people in predominantly white communities in Canada. Moya McAlister is NSRLP’s Communication Manager, and she grew up between Toronto (for the most part) and Trinidad, where she spent vacations with family. M…

Richard Susskind (Professor, University of Glasgow, O.B.E., and author of 7 books) has spent the last 25 years speaking up about the need to modernize legal services, and the increasingly acute need to democratize public access to both justice and justice assistance. In his conversation with Julie, who has worked on many of the same issues, Richard…

Each year NSRLP "graduates" law student research assistants (RAs) who have worked with us over the previous three years. These prospective lawyers have had an "immersion program" in working with members of the public who are representing themselves, an experience that we hear year after year is formative in shaping their path into legal practice. T…

This week Julie talks to lawyers Colin Feasby (Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP) and Brynne Harding (Bennett Jones), who jointly represented NSRLP pro bono in our recent intervention in Jonsson v Lymer at the Alberta Court of Appeal. This was a landmark case for self-reps, addressing the issue of vexatiousness, and just how careful courts should be whe…

This week’s episode features an interview about A2J issues with Mr. Justice Choudhury of the High Court of England and Wales, also President of the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Justice Choudhury is also Akhlaq (“Aki”), Julie’s lodger in North London in the late 1980s, when he was a law student at the University of London, and she was starting her ca…

Today’s episode features Julie’s conversation with Shannon Salter, Chair of the Civil Resolution Tribunal in British Columbia, which is Canada’s first online tribunal (and one of the first in the world). Shannon talks about how building a tribunal system based on the needs of its users is the first step in “human centred design”, and how greater us…

What would legal services look like if they were designed to maximize efficiency, rather than tradition and privilege? What would the courts look like? Very different in each case, as our guest Jordan Furlong, a legal markets analyst and commentator, explains. Such changes are being widely discussed now as we see the legal system – reliant on physi…

This week Julie speaks with Andrew Pilliar, Assistant Professor of Law at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, and now Director of the new NSRLP West chapter. Some years ago Andrew shifted away from legal practice – he practiced in a smaller firm and clerked at the BC Court of Appeal – into academia, because he wanted to find a way to work t…

National Self-Represented Litigants Project

National Self-Represented Litigants Project

National Self-Represented Litigants Project

National Self-Represented Litigants Project

JOIT is still on hiatus, but in light of the current increasing unrest in Hong Kong, we're re-releasing this episode from the winter of 2018, with a new introduction from Julie. Benny Tai has spent the last few months in prison, but thankfully is currently out on bail ahead of an appeal. We wish Benny and all those involved in the pro-democracy mov…

This week (our season four finale!) we present a very different type of episode for Ivory Tower... last year, one of Julie’s students at Windsor Law, Micah Pirk O’Connell, submitted a play as his final project for her class on how to work effectively and collaboratively with legal clients. Julie was delighted with Micah’s writing, and shared his (w…

This week’s episode is taken from a keynote speech recently delivered by Julie and her husband and professor of conflict resolution, Bernie Mayer, to the joint annual conference of the Ontario Association of Family Mediators and the Ontario Collaborative Law Federation. Julie and Bernie addressed an audience of mediators and legal professionals foc…

This week, Julie talks to her colleague, Dr. Laverne Jacobs, Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Windsor, and Director of the Law, Disabilities and Social Change Project (LDSC). Laverne describes her most recent work, pressing the UN Special Rapporteur on two particularly egregious cases involving litigants left without legal repre…

Today’s episode addresses the increasingly contentious and much-discussed issue of non-disclosure agreements in terminations for sexual misconduct. NDAs, as they are known, are sometimes justified as being in the interests of the victim – in fact, as the first part of this podcast reveals in a discussion with Julie on the defamation case against he…

Our episode this week deals with the most recent case that NSRLP has acted as intervenor for, at the Ontario Court of Appeal – Kawartha-Haliburton CAS v MW, Curve Lake First Nation and Office of the Children's Lawyer; it dealt with the use of summary judgements against parents in Children’s Aid Society cases. Julie speaks with Kate Kehoe, the lawye…

Today’s episode features a conversation with Jayce Carver, founder and Executive Director of Windsor-Essex Trans Support, the first ever transgender drop-in and resource centre in Canada. Since starting the organization in 2018, Jayce has become increasingly lauded and sought out as an advocate for and expert on trans rights and issues, and among m…

The scope of practice for paralegals, especially to help family litigants, has become a central issue in the debate over A2J in Canada. In this episode, Nancy Merrill, a family lawyer and mediator, and now the President of the BC Law Society, talks about her vision for expanding alternative legal services in BC, and her hopes for change. Will BC be…

This week’s episode includes conversations with three young women who have had upsetting and demoralizing experiences bringing complaints about sexual assault or harassment to police. Hannah Kurchik is a joint law/social work student at the University of Windsor, and has spoken out in the past about her treatment by police when she reported a sexua…

This week’s conversation is with Malcolm Mercer, the Treasurer of the Ontario Law Society and the elected leader of the legal profession in the province. Julie draws Malcolm out on critical issues for the self-represented including: how should lawyers treat and work collaboratively with SRLs? Can there really be a level playing field where one side…

Today’s episode features an extraordinary advocate for LGBTQ rights in the Muslim community, Siddika Jessa. In 2017, Siddika was the Secretary General of the Organisation of North American Shia Ithna-Asheri Muslim Communities (NASIMCO), holding a global leadership position unique for a woman. Then her son Ali Reza married his same-sex partner, Paul…

This week Julie talks to David Eby, Attorney-General of British Columbia; Minister Eby has a broad policy mandate, encompassing improving and supporting legal aid (including services to First Nations communities), and expanded poverty law services to increase Access to Justice. This conversation took place shortly after he had commissioned a new re…

Welcome to Season 4 of Jumping Off the Ivory Tower with Prof Julie Mac! For our season opener, we present Julie’s conversation with Beth Beattie, counsel with the Ontario Ministry of Health, who is an outspoken advocate for mental health awareness among lawyers. Studies have long highlighted the prevalence of mental health issues in the legal profe…

For our final episode of the season we’re taking a look at the ways social justice issues can be addressed through theatre. Dayna talks to Chris Rabideau and Moya McAlister of Arts Collective Theatre, Michael Potter of Post Productions, and well-known actor, writer, and mentor Leslie McCurdy, all of whom are doing their part to make the world a bet…

This week we take a close look at the process of recruitment that dominates law school for second and third year students. Eager to find a position that will be a resume builder and begin paying off tuition debt, students compete in a process known as the “OCIs” (“On-Campus Interviews”), for either summer positions or articling jobs in big Bay Stre…