For lawyers
Lawyers play an essential role in women's access to justice. Luke's Place has training, resources and pro bono opportunities to support your work.
Training on family violence
Luke’s Place offers both in-person and online training for legal professionals who wish to increase their knowledge and skills when representing survivors of family violence in family law proceedings.
Training currently available
Our popular online course for lawyers, “Effective lawyering with clients leaving abusive relationships”, is accredited by the Law Society of Ontario. Learn more about this training or purchase your access now. The information contained in this course does not constitute legal advice. The materials may be subject to legislative change as well as updates to case law and as such the precise accuracy of the content should not be relied upon.
We developed and deliver domestic violence awareness training for Legal Aid Ontario. This is currently offered as an interactive webinar to LAO lawyers across the province. Contact LAO to register.
Customize a training
We will work with you to adapt content and format to meet your needs. In-person trainings can be designed as single-topic seminars of one to two hours’ duration or as half- or one-day sessions covering multiple topics and offering participant interaction. Online trainings can be self-directed or interactive webinars or longer multi-module courses.
Topics we can build into a training for lawyers, include:
- Understanding family violence: dynamics, typologies, tactics, cycle of violence, post-separation abuse, why women stay/return
- Identifying family violence: screening tools, risk assessment
- Managing family violence files: trauma-informed practice, common red flags
- Best practices: interviewing techniques, discussing legal options, taking instructions, communication, case management, office set up
- Managing client safety: legal bullying, self-representing opposing party, safety planning for court
- Serving diverse communities: rural, Indigenous, newcomer, Francophone, lesbian and transgender, young, older, disabilities, men
- Working collaboratively
- Self-care
Our lawyer training work is led by our award-winning Legal Director, Pamela Cross. Contact us to discuss your training needs.
Resources
- Follow our blog for case law summaries on a wide variety of issues related to domestic violence and family law.
- Download our report on family violence screening for lawyers from the Department of Justice, Canada, website. The report includes a draft screening tool.
- Considering the pros and cons of a support worker attending a meeting with a client? Download our paper on The Impact of Third Parties on Solicitor-Client Privilege.
- Share our Family Court and Beyond website, workbook and court organizer with your clients. They’ll have access to family law information, worksheets for documenting evidence, and checklists for safety planning, court preparation and more.
Volunteer
All lawyers who provide pro bono services through Luke's Place have free access to our accredited training.
- Donate pro bono time to our legal advice services.
- Our Durham Clinic provides free family law summary advice to women dealing with abuse.
- Our Virtual Legal Clinic offers video conference consultations with women throughout Ontario, with a special focus on women in rural and remote communities. Learn more about this pro bono opportunity.
- Participate in our Legal Advisory Group. This is a group of family law lawyers and administrators of family law services who provide consultation about our legal work.
- Speak on a topic for legal information group sessions with women in the Durham Region.
Contact us to learn about our pro bono opportunities.
Preparation of clients in Durham Region
If you have a client living in Durham Region who may have been subjected to abuse in her relationship, please connect her with us.
We help women work effectively with lawyers. To accomplish this, we offer the following:
- Emotional support and support to improve a woman’s coping skills to assist her in working effectively with her lawyer
- Safety planning which facilitates requests for appropriate restraining orders
- Compiling historical information and third party information to provide to the lawyer
- Accompanying the woman to lawyer’s appointments to assist her in understanding what her lawyer has said and needs from her
- Support for a woman to follow through on her lawyer’s requests
- Assistance to a woman to cope with tactics used by her abusive spouse during the litigation process
- Accompanying the woman to court for support
- Assistance that may be requested by the woman’s lawyer (i.e. review of court documents)
- Referrals to other needed community supports (i.e. housing, income support, etc)
Support our services
Our services are provided free of charge to abused women and their children. If you would like to make a charitable donation, we appreciate your support.
