Fall in Alberta is a blink which transforms into winter so quickly we often forget that September, October and November are full of action here at the CBA. We welcome back all our members who are returning to their sections at the Calgary and Edmonton offices as well as our members from across the province joining in via webcast.
Members are reminded that the deadline to renew your national CBA membership has now passed. If you have not already renewed your national membership, please go to www.cba.org/Membership/Join-Renew to do so. At the same time, you can also review the Portfolio and Portfolio Plus options available to you to enhance your CBA membership. These options give members benefits such as CBA education credits, rebates on approved CBA purchases, and free materials-level memberships to up to three Sections of your choice.
Section registration is also still open for all CBA Alberta members. Section membership provides you with regularly scheduled professional development, as well as opportunities to participate in fun and relaxing networking events with your colleagues. To register for your Sections, visit www.cba-alberta.com/Section-Reg.
At the end of September, we held Alberta’s first Access to Justice week running September 30 -October 5. This year, the virtual soft-launch consisted of a week of blogging. The Access to Justice blog, ran for five days, and had twelve posts dedicated to specific initiatives throughout the province which help improve access to justice. Participating organizations included; Association des juristes d’expression française de l’Alberta, Calgary Legal Guidance, the Canadian Research Institute on Law and the Family, the Central Alberta Community Legal Clinic, the Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta, the Edmonton Community Legal Centre, Legal Aid Alberta, Lethbridge Legal Guidance, Pro Bono Law Alberta, the University of Alberta - Faculty of Law, and the University of Calgary - Faculty of Law - ABLAWG. Planning is already underway for Alberta’s Access to Justice Week 2019, which will be held from September 29 – October 5 and will hopefully include keynote lectures, fundraisers, professional development offerings report launches, townhalls and more. If you’d like to get involved, please email us at communications@cba-alberta.org
Edmonton has successfully hosted an Inns of Court program since 1996 and in October, we held our inaugural Inns of Court reception for our South CBA Young Lawyers. This is the Alberta’s version of a program based on the English tradition of dining with senior practitioners and judges. An evening of informal discussion on topics of interest to junior barristers led by four distinguished members of the bench and bar. We would like to sincerely thank all who have participated over the years, judges and senior practitioners. We look forward to hosting both these events again in the spring.
Each year we have a welcome reception and mentor mixer for our mentors/mentorees to meet up for the first time. With the advancement of using the Mentorcity platform this year we have been able to match up 300 senior lawyers and law students. We look forward to seeing these relationships spark new paths and help continue to grow the legal community’s values even further.
Also, in October we kicked-off this year’s Savvy Lawyer series with a session which was open to both CBA members as well as non-members to discussed the topic of Lawyers in Political Office- the numbers and the implications. This was just the start of the conversations that will be happening this coming year with the election. Our Agenda for Justice committee has been working hard to update information to arm our members with great collateral to discuss with potential candidates. Look for more information on your opportunity to get involved in coming months.
I am excited to let you know that advanced pricing, early bird registration is now open to CBA West, a conference presented in partnership with the CBA BC Branch. This year, being held in Penticton BC, April 26-29, we know the conference will sell out quickly. The organizing committee is putting together an amazing roster of speakers, for more information on the conference, including registration details, discount codes for flights with Air Canada and WestJet, and a full conference schedule visit, https://www.cba-west.org.
I look forward to seeing you there!
Another priority for the upcoming year is the transition to the new governance model which was approved in principle by the Branch Council in May. Aside from the drafting of new bylaws which will be circulated for review and feedback and voted on at a general meeting of the membership, we are setting up various transactional working groups to develop member engagement within the new model. At the end of the day, we believe the new model will be more streamlined and simpler to understand and will separate the governance functions clearly amongst the executive committee, the board of directors, and the CBA Alberta membership. We will be nimbler, more responsive to existing and emerging challenges, and more accountable. Alan Wilson Watts, a British philosopher, said “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” We invite all members to read more about the proposed changes when the bylaw information is made available later this year, and plan to join the dance!