Over the last twenty years rural practice, especially in the outlying areas has become increasingly challenging. The combination of an alarming rate of attrition and an inability to attract young talent to our communities has led to decline in numbers of practitioners in rural areas and is making its impact felt across the province. Access to justice has become more challenging for more people in the communities we live in. The transition from a paper based practice to an increasingly electronic world has not favored rural practitioners.
Many of us have realized that there are no ready-made solutions for these problems. The work that needs to be done to develop solutions to the challenges of rural practice can only be done by rural practitioners for rural practitioners. The realization that we are responsible to face the challenges as a profession practicing in a rural area is the basis for the Lunenburg County Barristers’ Association hosting this conference on November 3rd and 4th, 2011.
Because there are no ready solutions the conference focuses on Working Groups. The three major topics that are set out in our program will be discussed and worked on in small groups of 10-15 participants and the contents of the conversations will be recorded by our student guests. We have retained Matt Homann of LexThink as our conference facilitator. Matt has worked with these issues in the US for many years. He recently facilitated the conference of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society Annual General meeting.
In the Working Groups, which will be attended by all participants, we will have conversations about what tools can assist small practices through technology; how we deal with file management and file retention; how to start a rural practice and how do you retire from it.
During the “Serving our Communities” time slot, we hope for conversations about mediation and ADR, basic level services for those that are too poor to afford full service and are not eligible for legal aid or have issues outside of the family and criminal law area. We would like to introduce and have conversations about new billing models.
During our Recruitment and retention session we anticipate conversations about new articling models permitting rural practitioners to hire articling students and give them a full spectrum of experience. We would like to talk about intra bar mentorship programs. Moving away from the traditional competition model, with greater emphasis on co-operation to improve overall service to our communities are all topics that will be on the menu for this session.
The day ends with a plenary conversation. Behind the scenes during the day, the content of each Working Group will be analyzed and compiled into the framework of your ideas and proposals which you have developed during the day. We hope this will form the starting point for your local bar and working groups to further develop and implement some of these changes.
To make communication before and after the conference simple and easy, we have created this blog page through which you can register and pay your conference fee and participate in the conversations about specific topics to get us all ready for the conference.