APB is operating the program, which opened in November, with support from several BC law firms and financial support from the Law Foundation of BC and the McLachlin Foundation. The program offers fixed fees and modular pricing that is markedly less expensive and more upfront than billing for services by the hour.

“We offer a suite of legal services, that are packaged in a way that lends itself to ‘tidy’ non-complex legal work,” Maclaren says. “But if something does become more complex and needs further help, one of the supervising lawyers can help with that.”

The Everyone Legal Clinic is “practical and aims to stimulate innovation and diversity among new legal service providers,” says former Chief Justice of Canada Beverley McLachlin. “It could be replicated throughout Canada, and it has evaluation and knowledge sharing components to inform other access to justice initiatives.”

In some ways, Maclaren says, the program is a “creature of its time in the sense that it probably wouldn’t be happening now if we hadn’t had the pandemic, at least as soon as it did.” COVID- curtailed the provision of many services, including legal services, or at least they had to be reformulated in a more “virtual” way with communications technology.

People involved in the justice sector have not become more comfortable and familiar with virtual technology. “There is more understanding and acceptance of how people could connect over Zoom, or Teams or other video conferencing applications,” Maclaren says.