Lisa Hamilton took over as president at the beginning of January, after having served as both second and first vice-president. A graduate of the University of Victoria faculty of law, she has been a bencher since 2016 and is the founding partner of Hamilton Fabbro, a family law firm in Vancouver.
One major item that Hamilton said will be a major focus of benchers’ efforts this year is the law society’s response to the governance report from professional regulation expert Harry Cayton, which came out in December. The report praised the society’s commitment to equity and diversity but identified some weaknesses, including concerns about a lack of direct engagement with the public and consideration of their interests in decision-making.
Lisa Hamilton, Hamilton Fabbro
Hamilton said one of her passion projects as president is ensuring the implementation of the five-year strategic plan for family law, which provides more options for non-adversarial resolutions on family matters. She said working as both family law litigator and mediator have allowed her to see “all kinds of horrendous things” happening in family law.
“Anything we can do to increase options for families to resolve their matters is a good one. I lose sleep thinking about people not having those options,” she said. “And the pandemic has shown that people can be very good at adapting to technology as well — I can sit and mediate from my office or home using Zoom, and it has really increased the options for people to have their affairs resolved as long as they have access to Internet. So, increasing those options and use of technology and making it available to as many people as possible is really I am very passionate about.”
And Hamilton said she strongly supports the continuing efforts of the law society’s mental health task force, which is led by chair Brook Greenberg. She said there are many people in the profession who have suffered from mental health issues so “anything to reduce the stigma and encourage lawyers to reach out and get help is very much near and dear to my heart.”
“The statistics the task force brought to light, such as how those who are most likely to be suffering are the least likely to reach out for help, are really alarming,” she said. “The task force has done excellent work, and this year we will be implementing an alternative discipline process at the law society.”
The most recent bencher election saw eight new faces being voted to the board, including five Indigenous lawyers, and this diversity of voices was praised by Hamilton as being extremely important. She also noted the law society’s Indigenous intercultural awareness course was recently rolled out for lawyers in British Columbia.
“The course really makes you think about the fact we are the gatekeepers for the legal profession, and because of that we must be really vigilant in protecting people who rencounter unequal treatment and institutional biases because of who they are,” she said. “We as lawyers have helped create the policies that Indigenous people encounter in the justice system, but we also have power to affect those policies in a positive way.”
And Hamilton said a system for members to list their pronouns and forms of address on the law society lawyer directory, which was approved at the LSBC’s October annual general meeting, will be in place very soon.
“We are going to be reporting out of the March bencher meeting — the only delay was to make sure it was done properly and consult on the list of pronouns to be provided. Lawyers will also be able to change their name on the website instead of having staff do it, and will have Unicode characters to allow members to list their traditional names,” she said. “But the resolution also called for audio pronunciation guides for non-English names, and that is proving to be a little trickier.”
The B.C. law society’s next bencher meeting is scheduled for March 4.
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