CBA Legal Futures Initiative - Consultation

The CBA’s Legal Futures Initiative is at work to develop an understanding of the future practice environment for Canadian lawyers. By looking ahead now, we can assist the profession in successfully adapting to change and help to shape the future.

Our Agenda:

A wave of unprecedented change is affecting every aspect of the legal profession - competition, the price of services, how services are delivered, law firm structures, legal education and training, and regulation.

Given the complexities of the changing legal marketplace, and the impacts of this change on current legal practice, lawyers themselves must take responsibility for shaping the future of legal services in Canada. If not, others will.

The status quo is not an option, nor is a piecemeal approach where issues are addressed in isolation. What is required is a comprehensive, knowledge-based, client-focused, lawyer-driven initiative which involves a broad cross-section of the legal profession and its stakeholders, and develops strategic initiatives, guidance and practical tools to help lawyers transition. That's what the CBA Legal Futures Initiative is about.

Join Us:

During Phase I of the Legal Futures Initiative, the CBA commissioned seven research papers and held a facilitated consultation at our mid-winter meeting (February 2013) to gather members’ views on how client expectations might be changing.

Based on this material we developed a discussion paper – The Future of Legal Services in Canada: Trends and Issues

Now, we need your help. We want to know what you think about the ideas that are surfacing.

For this Phase II consultation, we’ve put together 20 questions and presented some “what if” ideas to challenge conventional thinking and elicit your creative responses. Please join the conversation by reading the paper and by answering any or all of the consultation questions that are important to you.

This is just the beginning of the Futures consultation. We will have more questions and ideas for you to consider. We hope you will join, and stay, for the rest of the conversation.

Feel free to answer all or some of the consultation questions, and to share personal experiences, ideas, contacts, or other information that you can offer to guide the Futures Initiative Steering Committee.

• Join the conversation: www.cbafutures.org – there will be regular updates
• Email: futures@cba.org
• Tweet: #cbafutures
• Write: CBA Futures, 500 - 865 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, ON K1S 5S8
• Fax: 613-237-0185