How would you like to make $65,000 annually after 10 years of practice?
Many lawyers would likely laugh at the thought, especially given the massive debts law students leave school with.
But that’s the reality for lawyers helping Ontario’s poor with everything from housing problems to employment and income issues at the province’s community legal clinics.
With pay equity, clinic lawyers make a few thousand dollars more, but even with that money their salaries fall far short of their counterparts in other public sector agencies.
Legal aid, of course, is an ongoing issue for many lawyers in Ontario, especially for the criminal defence bar. They say the recent three-year, $150-million boost announced by the government won’t go far enough, but Attorney General Chris Bentley should get some credit for emphasizing community legal clinics as a priority for the new funding.
That’s despite their status as the “forgotten group” in Ontario’s legal system, says Walter Van de Kleut, chairman of the Association of Legal Aid Lawyers.
Van de Kleut’s organization represents everyone from duty counsel to staff lawyers at Legal Aid Ontario’s law offices to practitioners at community clinics.
He is happy for the new funding but worries it won’t do much to relieve the gap, especially since it will deliver just $15 million in the first year, an amount that will rise in subsequent budgets.
“The problem is that $15 million isn’t going to address what’s really needed,” he says, noting LAO is already suffering a massive budget shortfall.
Of course, the general public might not empathize with lawyers complaining about making $65,000 a year. But while working as a clinic lawyer involves some notion of sacrifice for public service, Van de Kleut points out his organization’s members who work as LAO staff office lawyers make even less.
The big challenge is that other lawyers in the public sector make considerably more. A 2000 call working as a Crown prosecutor, for example, gets $144,000 a year, according to Van de Kleut. Those staffing the new Human Rights Legal Support Centre, meanwhile, make about $90,000.
The problem, then, is staff retention. “That’s why we can’t keep our lawyers,” Van de Kleut says, noting clinic
lawyers typically leave after three years.
Obviously, the pot of legal aid money is only so big, meaning private defence lawyers airing their grievances are going after the same funding as their clinic counterparts.
That’s not to say either group has a more valid complaint, but it appears evident that divvying up the money while addressing the gaps will be a daunting challenge.
So far, the government has been vague on the details of the funding given its plans to set up advisory groups to direct where the money will go.
That’s fine, but with legal aid in what appears to be a very tight squeeze, we need answers soon on how the government will ensure the system works. For now, it’s hard to see what the solution will be.
- Glenn Kauth
