How are Legal Organisations Funded?

As noted in the previous section, law students and the general public typically think about lawyers as being paid directly from the client. This is indeed the practice in a private firm setting. In the clinic and non-profit setting, funding can come from a variety of sources.

Government

Canadian governments both federal and provincial have contributed to legal aid services in various ways and different levels over the past fifty years. Ontario remains the last province with community legal aid clinics funded through a legal aid plan (Legal Aid Ontario).

Legal Aid Ontario was established in 2008 under the Legal Aid Services Act. Legal Aid Ontario receives funding from both the provincial and federal governments. Provincially, The Law Foundation of Ontario gives LAO 75% of the interest earned on lawyers’ and paralegals’ trust fund balances. The federal and provincial governments have cost sharing agreements that address criminal law, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, refugee and immigration cases, and other expenses.

Law Foundations

Provinces and territories in Canada have Law Foundations that use the interest on lawyers’ mixed trust accounts to support a variety of law-related initiatives including legal education, legal aid, community justice programming, legal research, and law libraries. In some cases, Law Foundations have provided significant funds to experiential programs and access to justice initiatives, permitting the expansion of clinical and experiential learning across the country. Law Foundation funding is reliant on market forces, however, which can lead to challenges with stable funding.

Private Donors

Private donors fund legal initiatives based on the individual wishes of the donor. Significant access to justice issues can arise when private donors attempt to influence clinical or experiential programs. American experiences are instructive in a Canadian context. Bob Kuehn and Bridge McCormack detail political interference in American clinics as follows:

“These efforts to interfere in law clinic practice have continued over the last four decades. They have ranged from pointed inquiries directed at law school officials or clinic faculty intended to influence case-related decisions, to threats to cut off clinic program funding or terminate a clinical teacher, to the actual denial of clinic funding or prohibition on handling certain types of unpopular or controversial cases or clients. Most efforts have occurred in the middle of ongoing representation, when the clinic attorney’s professional loyalty to the client makes an attempt to direct or regulate the lawyer’s professional judgment ethically improper.”

Similar – although less well-documented – instances have occurred in Canada. Most recently, a donor to the University of Toronto attempted to interfere with the hiring of the Director of the law school’s International Human Rights Program.

Law Schools

Law schools provide a variety of financial supports for legal clinics and externship programs. Some provide regular, annual funding. Others provide in-kind funding such as space, utility costs, technology, and so on. Still others provide salaried for directors, lawyers, students, or others. The degree to which law schools fund clinical and experiential learning programming is of significant concern, especially when external funding is insufficient or precarious.

Other

There are other sources of funding for clinics, depending on the type of law practiced and organisational structure. For example, the Class Action Clinic at the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor received cy pres funding in MacDonald v. BMO Trust Company and other class actions.