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Flip Your Wig campaign raises funds, awareness for access to justice

By Claudia Pedrero (2L)

As law students, we will soon step into a profession grappling with an access to justice crisis. Legal assistance is inaccessible to an increasing number of low and middle-income Canadians, mainly as a result of prohibitive financial barriers.

Many of us witness the problem through Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC) placements and volunteering at legal clinics, but there is little discussion at the student level about what we should do as a profession to ensure people are not denied access to the justice system. Law students need to be a part of the conversation, particularly given the significant financial pressures faced by graduating students, which leave many feeling they are not in a position to meaningfully contribute.

The Flip Your Wig for Justice campaign works to improve access to justice through a profession-wide approach, bringing together members of the legal profession to encourage dialogue on the causes, consequences, and possible solutions to the crisis. The basic idea is that lawyers are “flipping their wigs”—suddenly losing control or becoming very angry—in frustration over the state of access to justice in Canada. The campaign seeks to draw attention to the crisis by invoking the barrister’s wig, while subverting its pretentiousness by having supporters don zany wigs.

Flip Your Wig is also a pledge-based fundraising campaign, with funds going to six organizations which provide legal support to vulnerable Canadians: Advocates in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Pro Bono Students Canada, the Ontario Justice Education Network, Community Legal Education Ontario, and METRAC – Action on Violence.

Flip Your Wig is only in its second year, but has garnered overwhelming support across the legal profession and is active at every law school in Ontario. Notable figures participating as “ambassadors” include: former Prime Ministers Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien; former Supreme Court justices, Madame Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé and Justice Frank Iacobucci; every Ontario law school dean; and many major Ontario law firms, who have donated generously to the campaign. Faculty ambassadors from U of T include, among others, Ben Alarie, Brenda Cossman, Jim Phillips, and Douglas Sanderson.

At U of T Law, the campaign hosted an “Access to Justice Simulation,” where students were put in the shoes of middle and low-income clients attempting to access the legal system. It also hosted the “Display Your Toupée” photo booth, where students wigged out in support of the campaign.

The campaign asks supporters to wear a wacky wig on “Flip Your Wig for Justice Day” (Thursday, February 26), or sponsor someone who is making the commitment. The campaign will take a mass portrait of all supporters at the University of Toronto at 12:45pm in Vic 323. Everyone is invited.

Later that evening, Flip Your Wig for Justice is celebrating the close of the 2015 campaign by hosting a joint pub night with the SLS at Fionn MacCool’s (Esplanade) for law students from Osgoode and U of T as well as practitioners. It will feature live music from the law cover band The Fail Safes.

Claudia is Flip Your Wig’s student ambassador at U of T Law. To learn more about the campaign, visit the Flip Your Wig Facebook page, Twitter feed, or website (www.flipyourwigforjustice.ca).

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