While there were isolated efforts in the United Kingdom and the United States to education the public about legal aspects of their affairs since the 1800s, what we now recognize as PLE began to take shape in Canada in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Some of the organizations involved in this early work still exist including the Toronto Community Law School (now Community Legal Education Ontario), Student Legal Services of Edmonton, the Vancouver People’s Law School (now the People’s Law School), and the Legal Resource Centre of Alberta Ltd. (now the Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta). Others like the Canadian Law Information Council (later Canadian Legal Information Centre) and People and Law Research Foundation Inc no longer exist.
The Canadian Law Information Council played an important role in the early years of PLE. While not a direct provider of public legal education itself, it convened meetings of the major providers across the country which enabled them to develop cooperative relationships and share learnings and resources.
People and Law Research Foundation Inc was a unique experiment in delivering legal services to the poor. It began as a neighbourhood community legal office of a Toronto law firm. Located in a low income area of Toronto, it sought to prove that a commercial law firm could solve the problem of delivering legal services to the poor without the need for government subsidy. The experiment failed. It became apparent that the judicare model of legal aid funding would not cover the costs of much needed law reform, preventive legal education, paraprofessional training and legislative lobbying activities. The firm concluded that these needs could be better met through government sponsored legal clinics. So the firm turned the initiative over to a group that took on the responsibility continue People and Law as a community organization. People and Law took a very progressive approach to meeting its community’s needs. It made extensive use of lay advocates, trained people in other information and legal centres, and provided clients with the knowledge and skills they needed to deal with legal problems on their own. Although People and Law was able to attract funding from a variety of sources, it was unable to attract sustaining funding and had to close its office.
So far, there are few documents that recount the history of PLE in Canada: Lois Gander’s Radical Promise of Public Legal Education in Canada looks at how public legal education got started in this country and Roland Case’s On the Threshold documents the beginnings of law-related education in Canada. However, there are a host of reports documenting specific PLE initiatives which help to tell the PLE story. There are also some specific artifacts with records of meetings or other key events.
Resources of Interest: History of PLE
Documents of interest: History of PLE
2001 Notes of a facilitated workshop between representatives of the Department of Justice Canada and representatives of PLE agencies to develop a vision for PLE. PLEI Notes 2001 Version 1
Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, News and Views on Civil Justice Reform Cross country snapshot, (2003) 6, 10.
Canadian Law Information Council, CLIC becomes the Canadian Legal Information Centre : an overview of CLIC’s new mandate and its projects.(Toronto: 1990?)
Roland Case, On the threshold : Canadian law-related education. (1983). Legal Services Society of British Columbia.
Lois Gander, Radical Promise of Public Legal Education in Canada. (Edmonton: 1999)
Canada, Department of Justice, Public Legal Education and Information Program Review (Ottawa: 1997) – This document is a summary of the comments received during the telephone and in person interviews held with some 50 federal Department of Justice staff and over 70 Public Legal Education Information (“PLEI”) providers, intermediaries, and experts across Canada. This is not a preliminary report. This is a description of the categories of comments without an attempt to analyze them or draw conclusions.
People and Law Research Foundation Incorporated, People and Law Research Foundation Incorporated: A Description. (undated)
Marvin David Pitch, “Poverty Law and the Private Law Firm: an Experiment in Judicare” (1974) 22:2 Chitty’s Law Journal 60.
San San Sy, ACJNet: Electronic Publishing. (Edmonton: Legal Resource Centre of Alberta Ltd. 1998). This is one of the papers in the series on the components of ACJNet (Access to Justice Network). This paper focuses on the multi-faceted nature of electronic publishing and its possibilities within ACJNet. (Edmonton: 1998)
San San Sy, ACJNet: Online Education. (Edmonton: Legal Resource Centre of Alberta Ltd. 1997).This is one of the papers in the series on the components of ACJNet (Access to Justice Network). Online education is described in the paper as one of the five stated goals of ACJNet. The hope was that this paper would provide the basis for ACJNet to engage in the design and delivery of online education.
San San Sy, ACJNet: Library Without Walls. (Edmonton: Legal Resource Centre of Alberta Ltd. 1997) This paper focuses on one of the more prominent components of ACJNet: the Library without Walls. The Library without Walls (LWW) is one of the four components of ACJNet, the other three being the Virtual Community, Electronic Publishing and On-Line Education.
Kirsten Wurmann, The Role and Impact of Librarians in the History and Development of Public Legal Education in Canada: A Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography. (Edmonton: Legal Resource Centre of Alberta Ltd. 2008)
Kirsten Wurmann & Diane Rhyason, (2004) Power to the People: The Legal Studies Program Pamphlet Collection, 1976-1995. (Edmonton: Legal Resource Centre of Alberta Ltd. 2004)
Links of Interest: History of PLE
History of the Legal Studies Program (Legal Resource Centre)
Legal Studies Program Experience and Awards
An essential aspect of documenting and preserving the history of public legal education is the archiving of its websites. The intention of the Internet Archive is to keep the intellectual content of web-based material available on a permanent basis. With the waybackmachine — a device that displays the Web as it looked on a given date — the Internet Archive literally offers a window on the past and allows people to access and use archived versions of stored websites.
To access the web presence of public legal education sites since 1996, simply enter the web address into the Internet Archive’s waybackmachine at http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html. For example: enter www.acjnet.org for archived versions of the Access to Justice Network since 1996; or enter www.plena.org for versions of the Public Legal Education Network of Alberta from 2000 onwards.