There
have been a few things that I've been thinking about this past week,
some patterns starting to emerge. This week has gone by so fast (I guess
a shortened work week does that to you!), it's hard to believe that my
two weeks up here has already stretched into three.
1. Conflicts of Interest
My
day to day work is supervised by the legal advocate at the women's
centre, but both of our written work must be vetted by a lawyer before
it can be submitted to or on behalf of a client. Ultimately, the
supervising lawyer is responsible for the accuracy of any legal
information or submissions that we send into the world. Our centre's
supervising lawyer is a partner at a firm in town - I've had really
great experiences meeting him and his articling students, and I'll be
spending a week at his firm in July. He practices primarily corporate
law, but he does a lot of pro bono work and his firm also manages the
legal aid office in town. I've already found that, in a small place like
Fort St. John, there aren't many lawyers, and conflicts of interests
arise often. The fact that my supervising lawyer also provides legal aid
services in town poses a particularly interesting conundrum though. It
means that if a client comes in for legal support as a victim of assault
(for example, in cases of domestic violence), their assailant is likely being represented by a criminal defence lawyer at our
supervising lawyer's firm. That means that our supervising lawyer can't
look at or verify any of our work, which then means that we can't
provide any help to our client. Today we got around a situation like this by booking the
client an appointment with another pro bono lawyer in town - we'll
prepare documents for her before hand and have the pro bono lawyer check
them. Sometimes conflicts of interest are harder to get around though.
Earlier this week I had to tackle a fairly complicated family matter on
my own because my supervisor (the legal advocate) was in conflict - she
had the opposing party as a client many years ago. After two
hours with the client I finally figured out what would've taken my
supervisor about 20 minutes to do. It will be interesting to see how
that pans out.
2. Student Activism
Recently,
a great faculty member was dismissed from UVic Law, without any faculty
or student consultation. I've been reading several letters supporting
and condoning the decision - from both faculty and students - and it's
gotten me to think a lot about the role of students as active
participants in our own education.
At
law school, I sometimes hear complaints that professors aren't teaching
well, or testing well, or testing what the teach or teaching what they
test. I'll hear comments along the lines of "I'm paying [insert tuition
amount] for this education, I should be taught better!" accompanied by
much frustration. Certainly there are exceptions when an instructor is
truly not teaching well. And certainly the law is frustrating
(period). But these concerns most often leave me feeling more
uncomfortable than empowered. Often I fear that we're losing respect for
our professors - there's a sense of privilege that sits uneasily with me. Having said that though, I wrote a letter to the University of
Victoria's VP Academic and Provost strongly expressing my discontent
when I learned that the faculty member was abruptly dismissed. This left
me wondering why I'm uncomfortable with some elements of student
activism but not others. After giving it some though, I think I've
figured out where my discomfort lies.
I think that as students, we should be active in our education, just as we are active as citizens in a democracy.
I think that we should be vocal about our concerns, but not from a
centre of privilege - ie. because we're paying X amount or deserve Y
grade. I think we should be engaged because we value the kind of
education we receive, since that will reflect the kinds of service we
will provide to society. Perhaps there really isn't a discernible
difference between the two, but I think there is a shift when we
perceive our individual educations as a collective social good, instead
of as personal goods. This isn't too dissimilar to some of the discourse
surrounding the Quebec student protests (Chris blogged about that
earlier).
3. Soccer
To
end on a light note, I have made every soccer related blunder possible,
but I am now thoroughly committed to learning the sport. For my first
game, I didn't realize you needed shin guards (I thought the high socks
were purely a fashion statement) and wasn't allowed to play. Strike one.
For my second game I played (and really enjoyed it!!) but got called
out by the ref for not wearing the right shorts. Strike two. For the
third game I thought we had a bye (we did not). Strike three. For the
fourth game (today) I had shin guards AND the right shorts BUT I didn't
realize our time changed from week to week and showed up an hour late.
Strike four?! I feel like pretty much the worst team member ever. BUT I
figure I must have made every possible mistake by now so SOCCER HERE I
COME!
Cheers,
Sharon
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