Hall always worked collaboratively, but managing the COVID crisis truly put her skills to the test
Traditionally, the stars of the legal profession are depicted as lone actors fighting the good fight. Think top litigators advocating for their clients, corporate lawyers getting the deal done or politicians and judges blazing a trail of new law or legal precedent.
But there is a newer picture emerging to which lawyers can aspire. Instead of standing in the spotlight, this new lawyer brings stakeholders together to spark innovation or doggedly works across sectors to improve access to justice.
Elizabeth Hall most definitely epitomizes the latter. As the executive director of the Ontario Bar Association, she has supported many stars in the legal profession who have appeared in the spotlight throughout her varied career.
“I have really spent the last more than a decade of my career as an advisor, and that is essentially what I am now in many ways,” she says.
After serving as chief of staff to three Ontario provincial cabinet ministers and strategic advisor to Ryerson's Law Practice Program, Hall was appointed to head up the OBA in February 2018.
Hall also worked in private practice for nine years and ran in a provincial election in 2007, roles that she found challenging but brought depth to her current advisor role.
In private practice, the individualistic approach can be a challenge for a collaborator and advisor such as Hall.
“I continued to fight against not being suited to the private practice of law for many years, given how long I'd wanted to be a lawyer and my affinity for the law and my love for the profession, and it was very difficult to accept that maybe the private practice of law was not for me,” she says.
After nine years in private practice, Hall moved between public service and private practice from 2005 to 2007, acting as a senior advisor in various ministries and then practising at Scott Bellan & Hall LLP as she prepared to run in the 2007 Ontario provincial election. But it was not until she landed a job as chief of staff to Attorney General Chris Bentley, after her unsuccessful run in a historically conservative riding, that she truly felt her calling.
“That was, for me, the role of a lifetime. It mattered that I had an affinity for the law, it mattered that I had a respect for the profession. All those things that I didn't want to give up when I left private practice were things I didn't have to give up.”
After working with Bentley, Hall worked at the Ontario Bar Association as director of policy and public affairs, and then she returned to the Ontario government to work as chief of staff in various ministries.
She then took a contract position with Ryerson University’s Law Practice Program, and then she finally landed her current position at the OBA.
In that job interview, Hall pitched the idea of an “innovator-in-residence” program, which she felt would better address how the legal profession should be managing technological change.
“What is important to me is to get what I call the ‘lawyer technology partnership’ right. Sometimes, the mistakes of innovation in the sector are one I call capitulation — so, the people who say ‘Look, this is happening, so just get used to it.’
“I think . . . the OBA can play a role . . . in shaping what technology in the sector looks [by] not just capitulating to what it might look like.”
Hall says that lecturing lawyers to “get on board” without providing support is likely to be counter-productive.
“I think it leads to a sort of a dangerous evolution where you have experienced people who are very good at the practice of law, who are very good at their trade [but] don't have the technology to keep up with the changing requirements.”
While Hall has worked on several initiatives at the OBA, including a year-long gender equality initiative, it was not until COVID-19 hit that her years of experience working with stakeholders across the profession really came into play.
As the courts ground to a halt, Hall helped create virtual boardrooms, a virtual “witnessing” service for wills and powers of attorney and a remote arbitration and mediation space for the private bar.
The OBA, under Hall’s leadership, quickly provided hundreds of Zoom conference facilities to the Superior Court of Justice and the Ontario Court of Justice, and it trained more than 200 judges on the use of technology.
While Hall was rushing to get these facilities and training available in record time, her collaborative approach involved extensive engagement with stakeholders in the province and beyond.
This included virtual meetings with executive legal officers and bar executives from five provinces to share best practices and daily calls with 10 “sector stakeholders” to ensure, as Hall puts it, “effective marshalling of resources and efficient information flow for instant problem identification and quick solutions.”
Three days before the courts re-opened, Hall says, the OBA built a one-stop information centre centralizing updates from the Ministry of the Attorney General and the courts, which provided contact information to gather what issues were being experienced in real time.
With the justice system in crisis mode, Hall’s collaborative approach was put to the test.
“One of the things that the last 10 years of my career has been made up of is getting the right people in the room to talk through solutions.”
Indeed, a lawyer acting as an advisor and collaborator, and not just the star of the show, was just what the justice system needed in a time of crisis.
Key dates:
OBA responds to COVID
When the pandemic hit, the Ontario Bar Association responded by providing the following virtual services:
Virtual boardrooms: for client meetings, team huddles or for a casual get-together with colleagues from the office
Remote arbitration and mediation service: more than 60 arbitrators and mediators operate from across Ontario
Virtual witnessing: a way to help virtually witness a will or power of attorney
Court virtual hearings: virtual courtrooms were opened and more than 300 judges were provided training on their use. Approximately 350 OBA virtual courtrooms were in service across all three levels of court in Ontario at time of writing.
