This is the bottleneck that parents are experiencing.
Parents want to hire lawyers for their human rights complaints, and they are struggling to find people. Some people are finding pro bono lawyers, and others aren’t. Some people can afford to pay lawyers and they are still struggling to find people. Some parents are lawyers themselves, but human rights isn’t their area of law.
I know there are legal-aid clinics reading my blog. I also know there are parents who are lawyers reading my blog, considering getting into this area. We need help!!
The need: Parents need lawyers to consult with for summary advice, and/or they need lawyers to take on their cases for human rights complaints. The non-profits that support this work are overwhelmed. They tend to shy away from education cases because they are complex, and they don’t have the capacity to handle these kinds of cases. Because of an overwhelmed legal system, parents are struggling to advocate for failings in the education system.
This is an area that needs expansion.
If there is a law firm that is willing to take this on and expand into this area, the need is great. Even to just offer summary advice. An hour of consultation here and there as they navigate the system can make a world of difference.
Parents all want to know… do I have a human rights complaint on my hands? They need the confirmation and validation. More parents would be filing human rights complaints with this confidence in their case.
If you are a lawyer or you know of someone in this field, please send me an email. I would love to be able to send you a referral.
If you are a parent and you have used a lawyer that you felt was positive, I would really appreciate it if you sent me their contact info. I would love to be able to send them a referral.
In the meantime, for parents looking for summary advice, please contact the BC Human Rights Clinic – Legal Services
Here is a list of disability law clinics and other legal-aid organizations that offer summary advice or lawyer referral services.
When you contact these places, I highly suggest you write out what you want to tell them to best utilize the time that you have with them.
Discrimination test
The test of discrimination is here from the BC Human Rights Tribunal website:
- they have a characteristic protected by the Human Rights Code [Code];
- they experienced an adverse impact with respect to an area protected by the Code; and
- the protected characteristic was a factor in the adverse impact.
You are going to want to be able to explain to them what your child’s protected characteristic is, the harm they experienced, and how the harm is connected to their protected characteristic.
Timelines
Timelines are a great way to explain events. When lawyers present evidence in court, they tend to present the evidence in a chronological order.
Evidence
You may also want to explain what kind of evidence you have. Emails? Photographs? Video? Recordings?
Making the most of your time
I almost think of it as a 30-second elevator speech. People in business need to be able to succinctly give their business pitches. You want to make the most of your time when consulting with a lawyer, and the more organized you are in explaining the situation, the better they will be able to assess your situation, and you will get the most out of your time.
Consultation fees, I am being told, can range from $400 – $750 per hour.
If you are paying for a lawyer, every email you send or phone call you have will be added to your invoice for later. You will want to know how they will be invoicing you for your time with them. Human rights complaint settlements tend not to be high, so it will be important to keep your expenses low. The one great thing about being self-represented through the human rights complaint system is that you don’t need to worry about the school district lawyers playing games with you to drive up your lawyer’s fees.
Pro bono lawyers can sometimes take 2-3 weeks to call you back. Keep calling. Keep emailing people. Patience and persistence will be key.
You may want to go onto YouTube and search up videos on self-representation in Canada. There are a ton of videos on there. All tips and things not to do when representing yourself. Information overload. There are lots of articles stating that approx 50-60% of Canadians are navigating the court system without a lawyer… with self-representation on the rise. Very interesting.
If anyone has anyone specific or a law firm that they think should be on a referral list, please let me know.