The abrupt resignation of two of the four lawyers at U of T’s Downtown Legal Services has prompted a flood of questions from 205 students who say they have been left in the dark. The law clinic offers legal services to low-income communities, with the help of U of T law students.
The departed lawyers were responsible for supervising criminal cases the students took on. Over the course of the last three weeks, students have wondered who they would go to to guide them on their cases.
“It’s kind of uncomfortable right now…there’s been this awkward tension in the air,” said Elizabeth Acorn, a third-year student at the Faculty of Law, of the atmosphere at the legal clinic that, among other things, represents U of T students on issues such as academic appeals.
“Aside from their popularity with the students, the loss of these lawyers will exacerbate the concerns we had already resolved to write to you about,” said a group of 30 clinic members in a letter to the DLS executive members calling for a constitutionally mandated general meeting. The letter detailed feelings of unease about the clinic’s ability to continue providing professional education and serving the community.
Emotions, however, erupted even before Tuesday’s general meeting.
A regularly-scheduled meeting of the DLS executive on Dec. 1 lifted the veil of secrecy for the students gathered there that day-at least for those who have not been following the play-by-play of the situation being documented on at least two websites.
“The system doesn’t work, and I have been trying to get people to look at it for quite a while,” said Mary Misener, one of the two lawyers who had resigned, in an interview after both meetings were held.
Richard Litkowski, a criminal review counsel for DLS from 1996 until his sudden resignation, works at law firm Ruby & Edwards. Misener, also a criminal review counsel, joined the clinic in 1995.
A moratorium on criminal cases earlier this year was one of a number of concerns raised by students as well as Misener at the first of the two meetings. A lack of funding meant DLS couldn’t afford to pay the lawyers enough for their work on the clinic’s growing list of criminal cases, leading to the moratorium.
Where DLS’s criminal cases were once limited to trespassing and shoplifting, they have now become much more complex and time-consuming.
“It bothered me that there would be willing students and needy clients, and that I wouldn’t be linking the two of them together,” said Misener, as her voice started to break.
According to Misener, the inability of her and other clinic lawyers to get either a satisfactory explanation of the allocation the clinic’s resources, or an audience with the faculty of law’s Dean Mayo Moran, eventually led to the resignations.
Responding to Misener’s criticisms, Moran said there were significant privacy concerns involved, adding, “I had concerns raised and I dealt with them in a way that was most likely to create a good situation going forward.”
Friction also arose at the first meeting between students and the executive director of the clinic, Judith McCormack, regarding the rapid hiring of two new review lawyers, seemingly without consultation with student members of the DLS Executive. Since Misener and Richard Litkowski will be paid for the next two months, the clinic will be paying for two sets of lawyers for the next while.
“When people resign in anger, it’s really important in terms of the health of the organization to replace them as quickly as possible,” said McCormack, citing a posted notice by the lawyers that she says attacked the six members of the student executive who the lawyers supervise, a charge that Misener, Litkowski, and DLS civil review lawyer Amina Sherazee say is an offensive notion.
An overwhelming concern shared by a number of students, however, is that the clinic is not set up to run with substantial student input.
“My concern is that the decisions at the clinic are being made without proper consultation with the staff lawyers and the students,” said Andrew Parley, a third-year student at the law school.
“The reading last night speaks more to their desire to move forward and put this behind them than to addressing our substantive concerns,” said Jeremy Glick, another third-year law student, of Tuesday’s general meeting.
“The statement I would want to get out there is that students are unhappy. Even if clients are being served and we’re actually fulfilling our professional obligations, we remain unhappy with the way things have happened through this period of time. And we’ll continue to remain unhappy until these things are addressed.”
The general meeting held on Tuesday called for another to be held before the end of January.
