Refugee & immigration panel standards closed

LAO’s board has approved new general and appellate standards.

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The new standards: what they are and what they offer

The new standards are:

• A general standard for Refugee Protection Division and Immigration Appeal Division work as well as detention reviews and applications for humanitarian and compassionate consideration, pre-removal risk assessments, and danger opinions
• An appellate standard for matters before the Refugee Appeal Division and the Courts.

Both new standards are designed to:

• help clients continue to access high quality legal representation
• establish universal standards for all legal aid funded service providers, including:
  • private lawyers
  • staff lawyers and paralegals and
  • clinic staff with a refugee services agreement
• identify the appropriate levels of expertise and experience required for different kinds of cases.

Background

LAO originally developed a single set of panel standards for all refugee-related work more than a decade ago. In the opinion of the Refugee Lawyers Association and other stakeholders, these standards:

• are too weak for today’s environment
• lack mechanisms to review compliance or take remedial action
• fail to distinguish between the appropriate levels of expertise and experience required for different kinds of cases.

Between November 18, 2013 and February 28, 2014, LAO held public consultations to receive input on its proposal to revise the panel standards for LAO-funded refugee and immigration service providers. In total, approximately 60 people participated, via:

• six public consultations in Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa and by webinar, in both official languages as well as three in-house consultations for LAO staff lawyers and clinic staff
• Legal Aid Online, email, fax and telephone
• detailed written briefs from the Refugee Lawyers’ Association in Ontario and the Inter-Clinic Immigration Working Group

It collaborated with the RLA and took into consideration the concerns and feedback received to develop a second draft of the standards. It used this second draft as the basis for further consultation and development with the goal of finalizing and implementing the current minimum professional standards for LAO-funded refugee and immigration service providers.

This initiative is part of LAO’s larger effort to ensure that LAO clients – who are among the most vulnerable members of Ontario society – receive consistently high quality legal representation. Similar panel standards projects are underway in the other areas of law served by LAO.

Both proposed new standards reflect the feedback received from stakeholders, including the Refugee Lawyers Association (RLA), the Inter-Clinic Immigration Working Group, and individual members of the bar. LAO received this feedback during public consultations on a first draft during the fall and winter of 2013/14, as well as from RLA representatives in Spring 2014.

They are designed to:

• help clients continue to access high quality legal representation
• establish universal standards for all legal aid funded service providers, including:
  • private lawyers
  • staff lawyers and paralegals and
  • clinic staff with a refugee services agreement
• identify the appropriate levels of expertise and experience required for different kinds of cases.

Among the main changes from the previous draft:

• amendments to panel membership criteria, particularly the experience requirements; the standards now focus on establishing competence and expertise, rather than solely experience; they include separate categories for recent experience, historical experience and alternatives to experience
• the mandatory refugee/immigration law Continuing Professional Development (CPD) was reduced to three hours (from six) because CPD is already a requirement for licensing by the Law Society of Upper Canada, and six hours specific to this area of law was considered too onerous for persons who may be practicing in more than one area of law.