Access to Justice Starts with You: Volunteering with the Alberta Tenant Legal Advice Clinic
Written by Christian Gomes, ECLC Staff Lawyer
“By working or volunteering with ATLAC, you have the opportunity to provide point-in-time legal advice to tenants in difficult situations. Often, tenants have nowhere else to turn to get specific legal advice about the issues they are facing.”
Hi all! My name is Christian Gomes. I’ve had the honour of being a summer law student, articling student, and now staff lawyer with the Edmonton Community Legal Centre.
I am the newest staff lawyer of the ECLC’s Alberta Tenant Legal Advice Clinic (ATLAC). ATLAC is an Alberta-wide initiative, seeking to provide legal advice to tenants who are facing tenancy-related legal issues. ATLAC is a free program for tenants. It helps tenants understand their legal rights and responsibilities by way of 45-minute summary legal advice clinics.
If you’re a lawyer and you’ve volunteered with the ECLC before, you know that the summary legal advice clinic approach is a rewarding and challenging experience! It can be difficult to fully address eviction issues, habitability problems, or disputes between landlords and tenants in a short amount of time. However, working with tenants is highly rewarding. By working or volunteering with ATLAC, you have the opportunity to provide point-in-time legal advice to tenants in difficult situations. Often, tenants have nowhere else to turn to get specific legal advice about the issues they are facing. You can be part of a unique initiative at the ECLC that extends the geographic boundaries of your impact by helping renters across the province!
For example, you might get the chance to help a tenant respond to an urgent eviction hearing. The ATLAC program sees a lot of residential eviction matters, usually on an urgent basis. You can help tenants by distilling what legal issues are present at their upcoming eviction hearing and what arguments they can make that supports their case, helping them determine what evidence is relevant to their eviction, and what potential claims they might have against their landlord in the future. This type of advice can have an enormous impact for tenants. Your advice might help them avoid eviction entirely or extend the amount of time they have to find a new place to live.
If you’re a lawyer interested in volunteering with the ATLAC program, you can apply to be a volunteer lawyer here: https://app.betterimpact.com/Application?ApplicationFormNumber=1&OrganizationGuid=53eefe51-8ad0-47e8-a72b-81231b6c7016.
Or, if you’ve already volunteered with the ECLC, you can sign up for an ATLAC clinic visit through your MyImpactPage account.
Volunteer lawyers with the ATLAC program get the benefit of knowing they are helping a deserving community of Albertans navigate their legal issues. You can also receive mentorship and support from the experienced team of staff lawyers at the ECLC. Volunteer lawyers who commit to twelve, two-hour shifts in a calendar year also will get get access to one LESA noon-hour webinar.
Consider taking on a new challenge by volunteering with the ATLAC program at the ECLC! Broaden your legal horizons, help low-income Albertans, and get access to supports and resources available through the ECLC.