Committee service is an excellent way to get involved with the Law Society of Alberta. Most LSA issues either begin at the committee level, or are referred to committees for further examination and recommendations before being brought to the benchers for consideration. Committee service offers tremendous professional development opportunities and is a way to meet other members of Alberta's legal community. LSA committees include:
- Audit Committee
- Civil Practice Advisory Committee
- Communications Committee
- Conduct Committee
- Corporate and Commercial Advisory Committee
- Credentials and Education Committee
- Criminal Practice Advisory Committee
- Equality, Equity & Diversity Committee
- Family Law Advisory Committee
- Finance Committee
- Insurance Committee
- Joint Library Committee
- Practice Review Committee
- Pro Bono Committee
- Professional Responsibility Committee
- Unauthorized Practice Committee
Information describing activities of LSA committees can be found in the 2006 annual report available at www.lawsocietyalberta.com. (Committee descriptions are also on the website.) Committee membership is a one-year commitment, with related expenses continued on page 13 sidebar |
Continuing Professional Development Plans to Be Required
By Peter Michalyshyn, Q.C. Chair, Continuing Professional Development Committee
|
 The Benchers have approved the implementation of a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program for all active members of the Law Society of Alberta, to come into effect by March, 2009. The new program will require the preparation of annual CPD plans. Lawyers will develop their plans and advise the LSA on an annual basis that they have been completed. Plans will be submitted only on LSA's request.
The Benchers recognize that lawyers already approach continuing professional development as their professional responsibility. As such, this new CPD program is lawyer-centred, and is least intrusive of lawyers' independence. It is also consistent with the accepted principle that adults learn best when they direct their own learning.
What's new in the CPD program is the sense of intentionality: that lawyers must regularly take time to consider and plan their professional development, and must be seen to be engaging in such activities.
The CPD program fosters accountability within the legal profession, so that the Law Society can demonstrate, in the public interest and within an increasingly-scrutinized regulatory environment, that lawyers are effectively engaging in continuing professional development. Lawyers are perhaps the only professionals in Alberta not subject to a continuing professional development requirement.
The LSA will partner with Legal Education Society of Alberta (LESA) to introduce a toolbox in 2008 that will include a resource bank, self assessment tools, and CPD plan template.
- The resource bank is meant to be a continuously updated resource that will inform lawyers' choices for professional development opportunities.
|
 |
- The self-assessment tool is meant to help match CPD resources with individual lawyers' needs.
- While online access will be encouraged, paper-based versions of the CPD tools will also be available. Use of the CPD plan template will be strictly optional, recognizing that many lawyers already prepare and keep annual learning plans.
Key program principles:
- Aside from more conventional opportunities, lawyers will be encouraged to fulfill CPD requirements by committing to engage in a wide range of other activities which meet the definition of continuing professional development;
- The Rules of the Law Society will define continuing professional development broadly to include learning activities relevant to lawyers' professional needs or career interests, those of his or her employer, or those related to the lawyers professional ethics and responsibilities. In any case, the learning activity will have to contain significant substantive, technical, practical or intellectual content. It will be each lawyer's responsibility to determine whether a learning activity meets these criteria and therefore qualifies as Continuing Professional Development.
The CPD program ensures accountability so that the Law Society can demonstrate in the public interest and in an increasingly-scrutinized regulatory environment that lawyers are effectively engaging in continuing professional development. In the coming months, further details of the CPD program will be communicated to the profession.  | |
