«The Board and staff are delighted to welcome Lisa,» said Linda Rothstein, President of the Foundation. «Lisa has extensive experience in social justice, poverty law and legal education based on an understanding of community needs. We are confident that Lisa`s values and expertise will enable the Foundation to remain resilient and meet the diverse needs of access to justice in Ontario. Lisa Cirillo (LC): As an undergraduate, I studied criminology at the University of Toronto. I have taken courses where we have been asked to look at the intersection of people involved in criminal justice systems. Who is arrested by the police? Who is vigorously persecuted? Who will be sentenced to prison? It was very clear that there were strong links between low-income, racialized and Indigenous communities and the justice system. We were asked why that was so. In the law, we have this sublime phrase «everyone is equal before the law,» but if you look at the effects of the law on certain communities, you can see that this is not the case. Ms. Cirillo has been the Executive Director of Downtown Legal Services, a community legal clinic at the University of Toronto`s Faculty of Law, since 2010. Downtown Legal Services serves a highly diverse community of over 1,500 clients per year in a number of high priority jurisdictions, providing approximately 120 students per year to clinical legal education opportunities. The world of scholarships and foundations is new to me and I am very much looking forward to the challenge. I`ve spent my legal career constantly seeking funding for programs and organizations, so I have a deep understanding of what it`s like to succeed and fail, and I`m going to bring that to the role of CEO.
It`s important in our careers to challenge ourselves and try to keep growing. I look forward to entering this new world and learning from those who have been there for some time. I`m really excited about the foundation`s role because I`ve worked for or with just about every organization that funds the LFO (including the DLS Clinic). It`s an opportunity to continue working with legal service providers and community organizations that I believe in and that I think are doing a fantastic job, but in a different way. Now I will work to support these agencies. I have spent my entire career primarily providing legal services on the front lines, studying access to justice on a very small scale. Together with the Law Foundation, I will examine these issues from a macroeconomic and donor perspective, asking where we can make strategic investments to address the deep gaps in the justice system. This is a unique opportunity to have a different influence on access to justice. New challenges and urgent legal needs arise from the pandemic. We can already see that the effects are felt disproportionately along economic lines and other traditional social fault lines. Low-income people are experiencing the pandemic harder than people with the skills and type of work that allow them to work from home.
There are strong links between poverty and other causes of vulnerability, such as race, disability and immigration status. COVID is exacerbating and reinforcing these pre-existing inequalities, and this is true internationally. We can assume that the demand for legal services will increase significantly and will be for some time. Even though the province is going through various stages of recovery, one can imagine that there will be long-term effects on low-income communities in terms of health problems and future. I think it will be a challenge for the Foundation to work with its network of community organizations to identify these new legal needs and then be able to move quickly enough and put in place programs that can meet them. It`s a challenge, but there`s also a great opportunity to make a difference. Queen`s University Legal Aid showed me the value of community work and working in a clinic where we could offer many types of legal aid. The law is a pervasive force in the lives of low-income people and they are forced to interact with the law very regularly in many aspects of their lives. The clinical service model is a direct response to this. It is common for clinic clients to struggle with many legal issues and all the social services that arise from low income. Legal clinics can help you with your criminal charges, while we can at the same time help you with your family law case, your employment law case and/or your housing matter. I really like this idea of a holistic approach to client service delivery, and I first looked at this model with Queen`s University Legal Aid.
I also volunteered at the Queen`s Law Clinic. I liked that you met the client where they were and that you were able to give them a more comprehensive answer to the multitude of legal questions they were facing. I really liked the clinic`s approach. Lisa Cirillo has been CEO of the Law Foundation of Ontario since September 2020. Previously, Ms. Cirillo was Executive Director of Downtown Legal Services, a community legal clinic at the University of Toronto`s Faculty of Law, since 2010.