Hearsay, while relaxing after posting only a day ago, was clearly asleep at the wheel when Borstal Boy beat her to what was (is) clearly the biggest story of the year. But not to be outdone, Hearsay has the scoop on some of the underlying circumstances which may have at least partially led to the situation which has erupted today. Please note that this information has been cobbled together through a number of anonymous contributions.
First of all Mary and Richard speak to the "allocation of resources at the clinic". Among the 3 lawyers who have sent in their resignations only Amina is being paid to be review counsel in a full time capacity right now. Mary and Richard were only being paid by legal aid on a part time basis (6-8hrs/week is the number we have heard). Clearly they were spending much more time at DLS than they were being paid for by legal aid; students who work at the clinic can attest to the fact that they were working closer to 25 - 30 hours/week. They were holding down other jobs to subsidize their work at DLS; Mary probably doing duty counsel work, Richards at Ruby Edwards (criminal defense firm).
Mary and Richard asked for a reallocation of clinic funds likely so they could managably devote more time to DLS which likely meant that they were asking the university to contribute to their pay. They took these concerns to Judith McCormick, the executive director, who (as they stated in their post) effectively ignored them. Obviously, they also found no help from the student executive in bringing these issues forwards for a public discussion. There is some speculation that the Executive were effectively prevented from helping, as these issues may have been deemed to be a purely administrative or personnel matter and not within their scope. Regardless, finding little help from either the Execs or the Exec Director, the lawyers trotted on to the Dean herself, who told them to take matters up with Judith. After getting nowhere with anyone, it appears to have led to the eventual Q bomb described by my colleague B.Boy.
It is open speculation that Amina left in solidarity with the other lawyers. It is further speculation that in light of these issues the recent lifting of the moratorium on crim files may also have something to do with these resignations.
Now, with the caveat here that the whole story is not yet known, nor is it likely that it will ever be entirely clear, the question Hearsay wants to know is this... Why shouldn’t Mary and Richard be paid out of UofT funds? They manage a large number of UofT volunteers and full time credit students. They are vital to enhancing the legal education of our students here at UofT. They work hours that are disproportionate to the time they are recognized for. Someone should find out how much Judith is paid is relation to the number of hours she works and see if this all looks justifiable.
Or maybe that’s my job.
Signing off,
Hearsay.
14 comments:
There are a number of speculations in your post that cannot be substantiated. I suppose that is why your name is Hearsay. There has been no news of Ammina at this point. You also seem to be making some large assumptions about what Mary and Richard actually wanted. It seems to me that they wanted more funding for the criminal program at the clinic. Look at the exec meeting minutes.
I agree, speculation has fueled a lot of this post. Thank you for your post, I've edited the story to acknowledge that fact.
Nice work Hearsay!
Just a quick word as to how BillableTargets works. We basically get our information from other students who freely contribute to us anonymously. We are careful to say upfront that there will be large elements of unsubstantiated speculation. This is a consequence of using anonymous contributions. We do our best to piece together a story from a variety of sources, and encourage contributions such as yours to help us fine tune it.
Minor point about Mary's other work:
I don't think she works as duty counsel. You you can only be a duty counsel for a limited amount of time and people usually do it when they're fairly fresh in this business and trying to get experience.
She does have some sort of part-time Crown Attorney job at the North York court (working in bail court I believe). She also teaches (bar ad type courses I believe).
Judith is not on the $100,000+ public salary disclosure lists for either U of T or Legal Aid Ontario. According to the LAO website, LAO lawyers get paid $53,906 to $95,593 per annum, depending on position and commensurate with qualifications and experience, with regular performance-based increases. There are some LAO lawyers who are on the $100,000+ disclosure list but most seem of them seem to have special positions within LAO.
Just to go with that last post, does anybody know what is the source of Judith and the review counsel's salaries comes from? Are they considered to be employed by U of T or Legal Aid? Or do they get salary from both? Legal Aid funds a large proportion of DLS but UT student levies also fund DLS as well and the Dean is supposedly the head of DLS.
I'm curious as to where you think the money should come from to increase their salaries? Less financial assistance? Increased tuition? Reducing professor salaries?
The money could come from half of the tuition that full-time DLS credit students pay to spend an entire semester there and not at school.
Let's be clear about two things. The minutes seem to suggest that it was less about their own remuneration and more about the funding to the criminal law program at the clinic. There was a call to hire a criminal lawyer full time but both said they did not want to do it. There was no personal interest here. They resigned because they believed the clinical experiance of students was suffering and the clinic was not fulfilling its mandate. This is not speculation, one can see the steps leading to this crisis in the Executive minutes and in their actual resignations. The second point is that Judith's salary is not an issue. No one is making the claim that Judith's salary is somehow too large. Judith is the Executive Director and deserves adequate compenation for what is clearly a difficult position. Funding for the clinic comes from LAO and the law school (as well as donations from firms). Finally, I do not think there are any attacks being made on the part of students against either the Executive or the Executive Director. I think people are just upset and want some sort of meeting where they have standing, not an executive meeting where they have no standing and will be there as simply observers.
Just to clarify an earlier post - there is no time limit on how long you can serve as a duty counsel, and it isn't just people fresh out of law school who work this job. I don't go to U of T, so I know nothing about Mary's situation, but just thought that point should be clarified. However, there are "per diem" positions in both Crown and DC offices. If she is only working a few days/hours a week, and in a bail court, she is likely serving as a per diem Crown.
I heard from two DLS shift leaders that Amina has not actually quit, she's just thinking about it.
evidently - more hearsay - a big part of the problem was not just the allocation of funds, but the fact that they were shut out from being able to air their concerns and discuss the effective policies at the clinic. Apparantly, they requested a meeting with the Dean, who refused to speak with them. Crazy. Rcihard and Mary! Freakin' students can get meetings with the Dean if they want.
Update?
We're currently writing some thoughts on the recent events, and should have something up shortly.
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