One of the many great clubs you can join at UBC is the Law Students' Legal Advice Program (LSLAP). Some students may even get to go to court. Kate Addison, a 2L, writes about her experience going to trial with LSLAP.
During Orientation week you will get inundated with potential extracurricular activities. I was told emphatically by more than a handful of upper year students that I absolutely HAD to do LSLAP. Since it seemed to be the thing to do, I looked into what the program with the silly-sounding name was all about. The Law Students’ Legal Advice Program (referred to as “L-SLAP”) gives law students the opportunity to get hands-on experience by providing free legal services to low-income clients who do not qualify for Legal Aid.
Be warned: they are not kidding when they tell you that you’ll be meeting with clients after two lunch-time training sessions and just two weeks of classes. I was really nervous, but you will be surprised just how much you can actually help with only some common sense, three weeks of classes under your belt and Brian’s advice.
During first year, my work with LSLAP involved doing legal research, filling out and filing forms, and writing letters. Sometimes, it was just a matter of telling the clients their options and referring them to someone else. The most rewarding experience for me was doing a full-day criminal assault trial in Provincial Court.
I met with my client at one of the clinics I attended in the fall. As usual, we sat down and I asked him to explain why he was there and what had happened in his own words. He had just been accused of assaulting his girlfriend the week before. After photocopying the documents that had been disclosed by Crown and getting his description of what happened, he left and I didn’t see him again until one week before his trial in March, though we did communicate via phone and email. He had a couple initial appearances to confirm his trial date and such, which I was not required to attend.
I was very nervous about doing a trial, but I was told I would have a supervising lawyer as well as Brian to help me so I took some comfort in that. About a month before the trial, I began meeting with Brian and the supervising lawyer to prepare. It was only then that I actually realized that I’d be doing the preparation and trial on my own, with the supervisor and Brian there to tell me generally how to prepare and to answer any questions. They did not acquaint themselves with the specifics of the case as I had initially thought they would.
I seriously considered passing the file on to another student who wanted the trial experience. I was terrified to plan my own strategy, think up my own questions to ask witnesses and have the fate of my client almost entirely in my own hands, let alone to go to court and have to stand up and talk in front of a judge. I decided to keep the file, and in the end I am so glad I did.
The trial preparation took a lot of time, especially the month before April exams, but it was well worth it. The week before the trial, I spent dozens of hours drafting and re-drafting questions, a opening statement, a closing statement and a speak to sentence (just in case). I prepared witnesses on the phone by getting them to tell me their version of the events over and over, trying to get them to remember what happened 6 months before. I also researched and printed cases that were relevant, including one that I’d learned in Criminal Law class. I have to say it felt pretty good to apply what I’d frantically written about on my December exam to a real life situation to actually help someone.
The single biggest lesson I learned about a trial is that, for all the preparation I did, I couldn’t control what went on in the courtroom. I have always been someone who practices presentations until I’ve got them down and who doesn’t sleep until I feel prepared for exams, so it was definitely a learning experience. In court you have to deal with things as they come. The Crown did not call some of the witnesses they listed, some of the testimony Crown was relying on got excluded as hearsay, and two of the witnesses testified using an interpreter. Worst of all, even after 6 hours of preparing my client for the witness stand and explaining what he had to do, he got nervous and did just the opposite. Instead of slowly telling the judge what had happened on the night of the incident as I asked him questions, he started talking at lightening speed about what happened without breaks, adding in his own commentary on what other people probably thought and arguing that he was not guilty.
When I was standing up at the front of the courtroom facing the judge, the supervising lawyer was watching from the back. It was up to me to run the trial and to adapt to these situations as they happened. I was outside of my comfort zone, but doing a trial through LSLAP was definitely the most rewarding experience during my first year of law school. Sign up for LSLAP, and if you get a chance, do a trial. You will learn a huge amount and—who knows—you might just help someone who needs it in the process.
- Written by Kate Addison
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