NAWL and Luke's Place Letter to Federation of Law Societies (1)

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NAWL and Luke's Place Letter to Federation of Law Societies (1)

30 Nov 2022

The National Association of Women and the Law is a not-for-profit organization that works to advance the rights of all women in Canada through advocacy, interventions, legal education, coalition building, and other means. [...] As a result, we believe new lawyers should enter the profession with sufficient intimate partner violence awareness and understanding to adequately serve their clients and the public (including understanding the importance of screening for intimate partner violence and 1 understanding how intersecting inequalities impact the legal issues in, and legal treatment of, intimate partner violence). [...] The following are reasons to have a legal profession that is sensitized to the matters of intimate partner violence and violence against women: • Acting on the intimate partner violence epidemic: overall, 44% of Canadian women who have ever been in an intimate partner relationship have experienced intimate partner violence since the age of 15.1 Victims / survivors of intimate partner violence will. [...] Despite the prevalence of intimate partner violence and its relevance to a lawyer’s practice, research demonstrates lawyers’ failure to screen for intimate partner violence, including in the family law context.2 Education of intimate partner violence has been recommended by law reform commissions and domestic violence death review committees.3 • Recognizing situations of risk: one of the reasons i. [...] Since judges are chosen from among lawyers, the development of this competency among lawyers is essential to improve both the courts’ response to intimate partner violence and the public’s confidence in the justice system.

Authors

Suzanne Zaccour

Pages
4
Published in
Canada