In the black and white world of organized pro bono legal services, something is either pro bono or it’s not. Legal services are provided for zero compensation, or they’re not considered pro bono. This absolutist perspective is crude and fully disconnected from the simple translation of pro bono from Latin as “for the good”, but necessary to give relevance and integrity to pro bono as a functional concept. If the concept is stretched to include contingency fees or unpaid bills or reduced rates, then it ceases to have reliable meaning for lawyers and their clients. So for pro bono organizations across Canada, it’s either pro bono or “no bono” — the operative definition must be kept pure as the driven snow.

Ironically, the pure definition of pro bono places a hefty price on access to justice for many people. The provision of organized pro bono legal services is generally limited to low-income people who do not qualify for legal aid. A large percentage of middle-income people are left wanting because they exceed the income threshold for pro bono legal service, and yet cannot afford to hire lawyers at market rates. They are the forsaken grey middle in a black and white world.

A litigation service project under development in Vancouver intends to introduce some nuance to the volunteer legal service delivery game. A so-called “low bono” project, the Commercial Trial Assistance Project will engage several large Vancouver law firms in providing pro bono legal consultations and subsequent reduced-rate legal representation at trial to middle-income commercial litigants. The law firms include:

• Blakes;
• Borden Ladner Gervais;
• Bull Housser;
• Farris;
• Fasken Martineau;
• Gowlings;
• Hunter Litigation Chambers;
• Lawson Lundell; and
• McCarthy Tétrault.

These large BC firms have signed on to provide affordable legal services to self-representing commercial litigants, but also to provide valuable trial advocacy experience to their junior lawyers—many of whom must otherwise wait several years before running their own superior court trial.

To be eligible for reduced-rate representation under the Project, commercial litigants must be:

1. scheduled for a BC Supreme Court trial within four months;
2. referred to the Project by the proceeding’s trial management judge;
3. unable to afford market rates for legal representation at trial; and
4. prepared to pay for legal representation at a cost proportionate to their ability to pay and to the amount at stake at trial.

Once referred to the Project by a judge, each litigant will be guaranteed a one-hour pro bono consultation with a lawyer from a participating law firm, as facilitated by Access Pro Bono— BC’s primary pro bono organization. The pro bono consultation may then lead to a retainer for legal representation at a rate tailored to the litigant’s particular financial circumstances.

The Project marks a vital step in developing a more complex, mixed-model legal services delivery system in BC. It recognizes that low- and middle-income litigants have important legal needs that far outpace the ability of legal aid and pro bono organizations to serve them. And while sole practitioners and small firm lawyers have long been offering reduced-rate service as a basic element of sustainable community-based practice, the Project lays an affordable footpath to the large corporate-minded firms where junior litigators are thirsty for more courtroom experience.

Although the Project may add a welcomed shade of grey to BC’s mostly black and white world of organized legal services for low- and middle-income earners, more initiatives and collaborations are required if the system for delivering affordable legal services is to achieve something close to Technicolor. Thankfully, a lively array of public and private bar innovations in access to justice is emerging throughout the country. From medical-legal partnerships in Ontario to unbundled service projects in Alberta to pre-paid legal insurance programs in Quebec, justice system stakeholders are re-imagining ways to provide universal access to justice across Canada. These initiatives will build upon the unwieldy and outdated pro bono or “no bono” service dichotomy, and will provide future subjects for this Slaw column.

When people lament the deteriorating state of access to justice in Canada and the unwillingness of cash-strapped governments to address the issue in meaningful ways, their focus often shifts to the role of lawyers in ensuring the delivery of critical legal services. Many observers, including Canada’s Chief Justice and Governor-General, characterize the role as a professional responsibility tied to the collective privilege of an effective monopoly on legal work. Others point to the lack of any moral or practical imperative in the equation, and characterize the role as more of a professional expectation. Given that most but not all Canadian lawyers voluntarily engage in some amount of public legal service (legal aid, pro bono or otherwise), the latter view seems closer to reality.

Lawyers’ widespread engagement in public legal service is a heartening and under-reported phenomenon. And yet a close look at annual practice declarations reveals that a relatively small percentage of Canadian lawyers shoulder the bulk of the access to justice burden. Many lawyers are too busy to engage in public legal service, while others (particularly solicitors) lack expertise in practice areas that lend best to serving the public. All lawyers contribute indirectly to the funding of legal aid and public interest legal organizations via standard taxes and fees. Still, for a variety of faultless reasons, many lawyers give less of themselves than others to maintain public confidence in their self-regulating profession.

Perhaps it is time to consider the following modest way of balancing individual lawyer contributions to access to justice while building capacity for more public legal service. Call it the “Pay or Play for A2J” funding model:

As part of his or her annual professional membership fees, a lawyer pays a $300 “A2J Contribution” (an amount roughly equivalent to the average hourly rate among Canadian lawyers) that is earmarked for direct funding of the province’s legal aid and public interest legal organizations. If a lawyer provided and recorded one or more hours of legal aid, pro bono or public legal education service in the previous year— as administered and verified by specific organizations— then his or her A2J Contribution is waived. Thus lawyers “pay or play” to promote access to justice.

Statistics Canada reports that between 10 and 15 percent of lawyers provide legal aid services in most provinces. Based on reports from provincial Law Foundations and pro bono organizations, it is safe to assume that no more than another 10 percent of lawyers (typically far less) provide pro bono or paid public legal service through various legal organizations. In a jurisdiction of 10,000 lawyers, if a mere 1,500 lawyers claimed their waivers, the funding model would generate about $2.5 million in new funding once associated administrative costs are deducted. Of course, Pay or Play for A2J would hopefully spur many more lawyers to engage in claimable public legal service and revenue would consequently be traded for sustainable engagement.

Increased revenue of a few million dollars may not be obviously worth the effort of building the necessary administrative framework, since provincial legal aid organizations are generally underfunded by tens of millions. In British Columbia, for example, the provincial legal aid organization needs an additional $47 million per year just to climb back to its 2002 funding level. But a few million dollars would allow small public interest legal organizations (disclosure: including my organization Access Pro Bono) to survive and to continue providing critical legal services during adverse economic conditions when client demands increase and the supply of funding tends to decrease. More than that, universal A2J Contributions of the monetary or service sort would solidify the moral ground for lawyers to argue that governments should increase legal aid funding. All lawyers would be able to point to a direct and personal contribution to the cause. And they would speak increasingly from positions of knowledge and investment, rather than from perceived positions of self-interest.

Pay or Play for A2J’s engagement tracking mechanisms would also establish a platform for other progressive policies. For example, governments could institute student loan forgiveness programs based on engagement in public legal service. Law Societies could subsidize public legal service though further membership fee reductions. Such policies would go a long way in supporting the new lawyers, small firm lawyers and sole practitioners who often carry a share of the access to justice burden that is disproportionate to their means.

The details of the Pay or Play for A2J funding model are unimportant at this point (and perhaps forever). The proposed names and values of the A2J Contribution and offsetting service hours are presented purely to illustrate a concept—they would be adjustable for particular circumstances. But the fundamental questions for contemplation here are: Is Pay for Play for A2J hopelessly naïve in its design? Or can it serve in a small way to alleviate the current crisis in access to justice?

Anyone looking for a sign of the times for the state of access to justice in British Columbia will find at least 100 of them sprinkled throughout the province. In its efforts to provide maximum accessibility to some measure of free legal counsel for low- and modest-income British Columbians, Access Pro Bono (BC’s largest pro bono legal service provider) operates pro bono legal advice clinics in 100 different locations across BC— in communities stretching from the 59^th parallel down to the American border, from the Rocky Mountains over to the Pacific shores. Pro bono clinics are now more common in BC than outdoor hockey rinks, Canadian Tire stores and Boston Pizza restaurants; pro bono legal services are more widely available to British Columbians than moonlit games of shinny, Motomaster car batteries and Pasta Tuesdays.

The weaving of pro bono legal services into the cultural fabric of BC communities is a bittersweet phenomenon. On one hand, it reflects a pervasive spirit of benevolence and volunteerism among lawyers, and a healthy respect for the rule of law. It evokes warm and folksy images of kind-hearted lawyers counseling local citizens who find themselves a little down on their luck. On the other hand, it signals that many British Columbians cannot afford to pay market rates for critical legal services, nor can they rely on government to fill the affordability gap. It is no coincidence that the decline in access to justice in BC parallels the steady service cuts to its legal aid system.

Last year, the BC Branch of the Canadian Bar Association launched a Public Commission on Legal Aid to investigate the effects of BC’s hobbled legal aid system. The Commission travelled to 11 different communities— large and small— where local pro bono lawyers and community advocates talked about their frustrations in advising and representing marginalized people whose types of legal issues were once covered by legal aid. Particularly in rural towns and cities, they told of clients whose legal problems had grown from bad to worse to life-threatening because of no early and reliable access to free legal assistance or representation. For many of their more remote clients, the negative effects of legal service gaps were compounded by factors of mobility and distance. Some clients spent their last bit of money on a Greyhound ride to the nearest pro bono clinic.

In mid-October, the BC Branch of the CBA followed up on its Public Commission on Legal Aid with a new public awareness campaign bearing the slogan, “Real Justice Means Fair Access”. President Sharon Matthews said that the campaign is fact-based and intended to awaken latent public support for legal aid:

“Our research shows that the more the public knows about the real costs of continuing to under-fund legal aid, the more supportive they are of legal aid. People understand that real justice can only be achieved through equal access and that it is our mothers, children and grandparents who are being most negatively impacted by the status quo.”

Matthews added that the campaign is not meant to be adversarial but is instead intended to provide the provincial government with the public support it ostensibly needs in order to start rebuilding the system.

For now in BC, the system is being reluctantly rebuilt without much help from government. Access Pro Bono is expanding its use of Skype clinics to extend its reach to people living in isolated communities where few or no lawyers practice. Such clinics only require that a client have internet access in order to link by video to a pro bono lawyer providing legal advice from the comfort of his or her faraway office. The Skype clinics also provide private and accessible means of connecting clients with particular legal, language or cultural issues to remote pro bono lawyers trained to serve their sensitive needs. A woman dealing with a violent domestic situation in a small remote community, for example, can connect by Skype on a smartphone to a pro bono lawyer associated with a women’s support services organization in a big city. With its greater in-person service reach, Access Pro Bono is also talking to the Legal Services Society (BC’s legal aid provider) about having its rural pro bono clinic lawyers perform legal aid intake and occasionally take on legal aid clients who first present as pro bono clients.

Across the country in Nova Scotia, the provincial government is funding the same concept of remote legal advice. Rural Cape Bretoners will have access to free legal advice on family law matters by virtue of a pilot project using video-conferencing technology. Legal aid lawyers from Halifax, Port Hawkesbury and Sydney will advise people on family law issues including divorce, division of assets and debt, child and spousal support, and custody arrangements. In a refreshing statement of commitment to providing access to justice to all individuals, provincial Justice Minister Ross Landry said: “Government is committed to making the justice system more accessible for all Nova Scotians. Not everyone can take advantage of this free service in person.”

The difference between BC (where pro bono clinics are nearing a saturation point) and Nova Scotia (where there are very few organized pro bono service providers) in the application of the same remote service delivery concept revives a fundamental question regarding the role of organized pro bono legal services in any system for providing universal access to justice: When does pro bono serve to alleviate the political pressure on government to adequately fund legal aid? It is perhaps tempting to say “sooner than later”, but then who is willing to risk forsaking thousands of individuals in critical need of legal help on the hope that government develops a conscience?

Is the practice of law predominantly a business or a profession? The debate is an old one. When Governor General David Johnston spoke of the practice of law at the recent Canadian Legal Conference in Halifax, he described it as much more than a profit-driven business. He portrayed a noble profession with duties to the client, to justice and to the public interest. He saw a social contract as existing between lawyers and society:

“There are three principal elements to any profession’s social contract. First, the profession is characterized by specialized knowledge that is taught formally and obtained by experience and under supervision. Second, the State gives it a right to have a monopoly and to control entry and exit standards and competence and, to some degree, fees. Third, it has a responsibility to society to serve beyond the needs of specific clients.

We enjoy a monopoly to practice law. In return, we are duty bound to serve our clients competently, to improve justice and to continuously create the good. That’s the deal.”

With high talk of improving justice and creating good, the Governor General could just as easily have said, “That’s the ideal.” His speech was the most recent in a long line of speeches by very esteemed officials (including Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin’s remarks at the same conference) to trumpet the ideals of professionalism in the face of rapidly deteriorating public confidence in our justice system.

Back in 1999, several years prior to ascending to the Supreme Court of Canada, Rosalie Abella identified vision, innovation and idealism as equal or greater indicators of success as a lawyer than money, partnership and hard work. She said: “If we venerate these qualities and reward those who have them with our respect, we send signals to the profession that our shared values and expectations exceed the tangible economic consequences of the expertise we enjoy.” Abella theorized that three basic values merged in a “good lawyer”: a commitment to competence, a commitment to ethics, and a commitment to professionalism that, by her reckoning, transfused the public interest into the two other values.

Our law schools and law societies are rightly preoccupied with instilling and enforcing the first two values: competence and ethics. But both tend to leave the third value of professionalism dangling. Every Canadian law school offers a course or two on issues of social justice, and supports or accommodates a pro bono clinical program that increases access to justice for local low-income individuals. But few if any law schools go much further than that; professionalism (at least of the sort contemplated by the Governor General and Abella) is left for lawyers to learn on the job.

Our law societies, meanwhile, do little more. They protect the public interest by enforcing minimum standards of competence and ethics, but they do not serve the public interest by ensuring that lawyers fulfill any duties to “improve justice and continuously create the good.” If our law societies were serious about ensuring some standard of active professionalism, they would impose a professional responsibility on lawyers to provide legal aid or pro bono services, make public service the prime consideration for appointment to high positions, and adopt aggressive positions in urging governments to provide adequate levels of funding to legal aid.

However little they do to promote the Governor General’s brand of professionalism, our law schools and law societies do even less to ensure that lawyers know how to manage a business. The skills of business management are also left for lawyers to learn on the job. Laden with student loan debt, most law graduates are thrust into the traditional law firm business model with only a basic understanding of how revenues are generated, balanced against expenses and distributed throughout the firm. It does not take long to understand that their main priority is to build the necessary competence and meet the necessary ethical requirements in order to maximize revenues. Relatively few lawyers are left with the time, energy and job security to serve the public good. Lawyers are too busy chasing down business in a competitive global market. It is this reality that prevents many private practitioners from pursuing the lofty ideals supported by the Governor General, judges and academics. 

At the same time as a higher brand of professionalism seems unaffordable, it may still be what stands between the profession and deregulation. The Governor General predicts dire consequences for the profession if it fails to serve beyond the needs of paying clients:

“What happens if we fail to meet our obligations under the social contract? Society will change the social contract, and redefine professionalism for us. Regulation and change will be forced upon us—quite possibly in forms which diminish or remove our self-regulatory privilege.”

Indeed, the voices calling for deregulation are getting louder. In a recent Wall Street Journal editorial entitled, “Time to Deregulate the Practice of Law”, it is argued that deregulating the American legal industry would result in the availability of more responsive and less expensive legal services for consumers. The authors claim that “competition supplied by new legal service providers, who may or may not have some type of law degree and may even work for a non-lawyer-owned firm, will not only lead to aggressive price competition but also a search for more efficient methods to serve clients.” They further claim that the competence and ethical levels of “established lawyers” would not suffer in the absence of professional regulation, since market demand and enhanced online tracking would serve to keep them buoyant.

The American legal profession is also threatened by flank attacks from online legal companies that are radically altering the way by which legal services are delivered. “Elawyering” outfits like LegalZoom and RocketLawyer offer self-fillable forms for basic wills, powers of attorney, incorporations, basic divorces, copyright filings, and other simple legal matters at minimal cost to consumers. Slaw columnist Jordan Furlong calls these new developments “disruptors”, and predicts similar disruption and upheaval for Canadian lawyers and law firms.

So how will the legal profession react to these threats and disruptive influences? Will it adapt the traditional law firm business model to become more efficient, convenient and accessible? Will it heed the Governor General’s call and pursue his version of professionalism in a collective effort to revitalize and prioritize the concept of noblesse oblige? Will it do both? If it bucks the business-minded trend and takes the higher road of professionalism, it has a long, uphill distance to travel. And it may already be too late anyway.

Hot: Discussing the civil justice system

Not: Funding the civil justice system

The civil justice system will likely never be a popular subject of household discussion or even a top trending topic on Twitter for a day, but it is receiving a little more attention in mainstream and social media of late. Sadly, it is receiving attention for all the wrong reasons. In the United States, the new feature-length documentary Hot Coffee explores a nation-wide conservative campaign to institute tort reforms that restrict the liability of corporations and medical professionals, but likewise limit access to justice for ordinary Americans. British newspapers, meanwhile, are reporting on a Ministry of Justice bill that proposes to cut $550 million in mostly civil legal aid expenditures from its annual $3.3 billion legal aid budget, and also reform the use of contingency fee agreements. And back home in Canada, the Public Commission on Legal Aid in British Columbia recently concluded that BC’s legal aid system is broken and failing to meet the legal needs of individuals whose shelter, sustenance or health is at stake.

Calculated erosion of access to civil justice is the common theme to these stories. It is most colourfully illustrated in Hot Coffee where director and former personal injury lawyer Susan Saladoff condemns the motivations and tactics of corporate America and its political servants who push for liability limiters like caps on pecuniary damages and mandatory arbitration. Saladoff begins her admittedly one-sided documentary by debunking myths surrounding the famous case of Liebeck v. McDonald’s— commonly known as the McDonald’s coffee case. By Saladoff’s reckoning, big business interests have mythologized the McDonald’s coffee case and similar high-profile personal injury cases as part of a hugely successful campaign to convince Americans that their civil justice system is bogged down by countless frivolous lawsuits filed by plaintiffs seeking “jackpot justice”. She lines up Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Halliburton and Pfizer on the side of corporate greed, and Al Franken, plaintiff families and reluctant activist Jamie Leigh Jones— who sued government contractor KBR after being raped in Iraq— on the side of citizens’ rights. In Saladoff’s own words:

Because of the success of the public relations campaigns, paid for by tobacco, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, to name a few, our civil justice system is not impartial. Jurors have been led to believe that a large verdict will affect their pocketbooks. Voters believe that we have a court system out of control that needs reforming. Although there are consumer advocacy groups who have attempted to set the story straight, there has yet to be enough money to launch the kind of public relations campaign for consumers that can even begin to combat and challenge the public relations campaigns of pro-business and tort reform groups.

Saladoff hopes that her documentary will spur greater funding of consumer advocacy campaigns, and ultimately change the way Americans think about their civil justice system.

Access to civil justice is in better shape in the United Kingdom, but positioned to take a fall in the name of fiscal austerity. The Conservative-led government has drafted a bill that would remove civil legal aid from issues involving debt, government benefits, employment, immigration and housing. Funding would no longer be available to 140,000 cases involving welfare benefits, 110,000 cases involving debt matters, 50,000 cases involving serious housing problems, and 30,000 cases involving employment problems. Pundits estimate that that over a third of free legal advice centres in England and Wales would be forced to close for lack of funds. Lady Hale, a UK Supreme Court judge, has commented openly on the harmful impacts of the bill— declaring that they would have a "disproportionate effect upon the poorest and most vulnerable in society," and wryly observing that “in England, justice is open to all— like the Ritz.” Also, in line with the American tort reform campaign, the Ministry of Justice has mobilized to suppress what it perceives as a pervasive “compensation culture” by proposing to abolish after-the-event insurance premiums and success fees (i.e. legal fees directly recoverable from the losing party).

As devastating as the proposed bill may seem to many Brits, it would at least preserve civil legal aid for cases involving threats to liberty, physical safety, and the immediate threat of homelessness. British Columbians at serious risk of becoming homeless should be so lucky as their British peers. Nearly ten years of sustained cuts to BC’s legal aid system have led to the elimination of all government-funded poverty law services, and have left citizens to largely fend for themselves in confronting civil legal issues that threaten their basic human needs. In the recent Report of the Public Commission for Legal Aid in British Columbia, Commissioner and prominent BC lawyer Leonard Doust called for legal aid to be recognized as an essential public service, and for the provincial and federal governments to increase funding for legal aid on the basis that “the provision of essential public legal services is a governmental responsibility and the delivery of core services should not depend upon charitable contributions”. BC’s Attorney General responded to the Report by characterizing many of Doust’s recommendations as “nice” but ultimately unaffordable goals in light of the overriding priorities of the provincial government— funding an over-burdened health care system being at the very top.

If popular discussion of civil justice issues is heating up at the moment, lofty talk of access to justice is quickly cooled by the bottom line of state economies. As many news stories seem to indicate, the rule of law and due process—those wonderful ideals of any respectable civil justice system— are fast becoming luxuries in the US, UK and Canada. We are led to believe that we can no longer afford them.

It is a well-documented and oft-lamented fact that the problem of limited access to justice is far worse in the rural and remote areas of Canada than in its cities and suburbs. Previous Slaw blog entries have outlined the multitude of distance-related obstacles that prevent many rural and small-town Canadians from finding quick and affordable resolutions to their legal problems. Geographic restrictions do not apply to legal problems, however. Wherever you find personal and business relationships, you will find legal problems. They stretch freely across the country—from “sea to sea to sea,” as Canadian politicians like to say these days.

In order to give manageable form to the issue, the problem of limited access to justice is often deconstructed and then approached again as a problem of limited access to legal services. The usual theory posits that consumer demand for affordable legal services far outstrips the supply of affordable legal service providers, more so in rural and remote areas. There are seemingly not enough lawyers, paralegals and notaries to go around. Eminently wise judges and academics have said so. They have called for a greater number of law students to be admitted to a greater number of law schools, for paralegals and notaries to have a greater share of the legal market, and for a greater number of incentives for legal service providers to set up shop in small communities.

But is the common supply-and-demand assessment entirely true? It is at least mostly true. There is no question that the legal profession is greying. In British Columbia, the average age of practicing lawyers is over 48, with nearly 20% being 60 years of age or older. There is no question that many small Canadian cities and towns are doing without a sufficient number of lawyers. Indeed, some vast regions— like the far northern parts of most provinces— are doing without any lawyers at all. And there is no question that a disproportionate number of legal service providers are choosing to practice in Canada’s large cities rather than in its small communities. These conditions have led to distorted legal markets in rural areas where, for example, the only lawyer for miles around can charge double or triple the billable rate of his/her big city counterpart.

The latter issue is likely as much about connectivity as it is about supply of lawyers. We know that there are sizeable numbers of unemployed and under-employed lawyers residing (if not necessarily working) in large urban areas. Canadian law societies and bar associations are doing their best to convince these lawyers to move their practices to more fertile rural ground. Some projects like the Canadian Bar Association – BC Branch’s Rural Education and Access to Lawyers Program (REAL) have achieved notable success in this regard. Other recent developments, like the establishment of a law school at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops with the mandate to encourage its graduates to practice law in small communities, aim to address the problem as well. But try as they might, these and other initiatives are unlikely to correct the severe imbalance in distribution of lawyers across urban and rural areas. For all their respect for the law, Canadian lawyers seem unwilling to respect Fick’s Law which states that objects are compelled to move from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration.

So the question is: How can unemployed and under-employed urban lawyers provide their valuable (and ostensibly affordable) legal services to under-served rural consumers? In a globalized age when complex corporate legal work is being outsourced to India, and the world’s largest law firms have offices in several continents, the answer ought to be simple. The answer is simple, at least, for the purposes of Canada’s organized pro bono service providers who are forced to find ways to deliver critical legal services to low-income individuals residing in areas where no lawyers practice. These pro bono organizations are connecting lawyers and their remote clients via peer-to-peer videoconferencing applications like Skype, and via the good, old-fashioned telephone. In this basic legal advice model using Skype, a client finds a private and secure computer (often at a local social agency) or smartphone, and connects to a pro bono lawyer sitting in front of his/her office computer. Ongoing solicitor-client interviews and exchanges then occur via pre-arranged Skype appointments, with PDF documents travelling back and forth, and with the advantage of both parties being able to record and locally archive their exchanges using a screencasting application.

In 2011, the remote provision of legal services via videoconferencing technology is nothing new or revolutionary. But it is surely underused as a business tool. With the advent and increasing adoption of e-discoveries, e-mediations and even e-trials in many Canadian jurisdictions, little seems to stand in the way of tech-savvy lawyers marketing their services in faraway under-served places, and thus building highly profitable online practices. Such practices must overcome small regulatory obstacles relating to proper client identification and document execution, but the offsetting advantages are significant; they avoid the high overhead costs associated with conventional bricks-and-mortar businesses, and they are environment-friendly because of their mostly paperless operation.

The proliferation of affordable online legal services will not solve the problem of limited access to legal services in rural and remote communities. It is a complex problem and, like most complex problems, it requires complex solutions. The most effective solution will always involve a greater number of lawyers and other legal service providers bringing their services physically closer to under-served markets, since consumers still prefer the warmth and certainty of in-person communications. But bridging geographical gaps will forever be a struggle across these “few acres of snow”, and the potential for online legal services to increase the accessibility of affordable legal services in all regions of Canada seems largely untapped.