12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Sandboxes: What's the Buzz? Tell Me What's Happening

Access to civil justice is in a state of emergency. The legal needs of Canadians remain largely unmet, despite efforts by the legal profession and governments to address the issue. In response to this crisis, both lawyers and non-lawyers are innovating to provide legal services in more accessible and affordable ways. However, their initiatives are sometimes stopped in their tracks by the rules governing the legal profession.

Law societies in various jurisdictions have recently implemented Innovation Sandboxes, which allow for some of these rules to be temporarily lifted to encourage the development of innovative pilot projects. These initiatives echo a recent CBA Resolution that called for law societies to permit regulatory innovations that have the potential to improve accessibility, affordability, and quality of civil legal services.

This webinar will provide a deep dive into these new sandboxes. It will explore the reasons for which they were established, the parameters along which they analyze and approve projects, the safeguards they implement to protect the public, and some of the early results they have generated in their first months or years of operation. We will also discuss some of the differences between these sandboxes and the prospective regulatory changes they may yield in the future.

Speaker(s)

Sue Crismon, Executive Director, Office of Legal Services Innovation, Utah Supreme Court 
Len Polsky, Manager, Legal Technology and Mentorship, Law Society of Alberta 
Heather Di Dio, Interim Manager, Access to Innovation, Law Society of Ontario 
Lesley Small, Senior Director, Credentials, Professional Development & Practice Support, Law Society of British Columbia

Moderator

Jérémy Boulanger-Bonnelly, SJD Candidate, University of Toronto Faculty of Law