A new idea with a long history behind it

Everyone Legal Clinic is a relatively new innovation in affordable legal services. But the idea behind it has been decades in the making.

Our parent organization, Access Pro Bono Society of BC (APB), has helped hundreds of thousands of people over the past two decades. Through that work, we have seen firsthand how too many British Columbians are shut out of meaningful access to legal help—and how geography, income, race and other barriers can determine whether someone is able to find justice.

Unequal access to justice

For many people from racialized communities, distrust of the legal system is grounded in a history of institutional racism and repeated failures to protect individuals and communities.

Geography creates another serious barrier. Law firms are heavily concentrated in southern BC's urban centres, leaving many people in rural, remote and reserve communities with few—or no—locally based lawyers they know and trust.

At the same time, the path into the legal profession can reinforce these inequities. Law graduates with the skills, cultural knowledge and lived experience needed to serve underserved communities often face significant barriers within the traditional articling system. Mature students and students from remote communities, for example, may have to move to larger cities to find articling positions—sometimes leaving their families and home communities permanently.

APB came to see that access to justice and diversity within the legal profession are closely connected. We began to imagine a different model: one that could help develop a more diverse, inclusive and culturally responsive generation of legal professionals while expanding access to affordable legal services in communities that have long been underserved.

That idea became Everyone Legal Clinic.

An opportunity to innovate

In late 2020, the Law Society of BC created its Innovation Sandbox, allowing non-traditional legal service providers to apply to deliver defined legal services to people whose needs were unmet or underserved.

At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic was rapidly transforming the way legal services were delivered. Videoconferencing and other technologies, once viewed with caution, had become essential tools for lawyers, courts and clients.

APB saw an opportunity to bring these developments together.

In August 2021, APB applied to the Innovation Sandbox for permission to develop a virtual public-interest legal clinic. The proposed Clinic would serve several purposes at once: an experiential learning centre for articling students and new notaries, a place for emerging legal professionals to develop practical skills, and an incubator for practitioners committed to providing affordable legal services in underserved BC communities.

The Law Society accepted APB's proposal, clearing the way for Everyone Legal Clinic.

The Clinic launches

In May 2022, Everyone Legal Clinic launched as the world's first virtual public-interest law teaching clinic and legal practice incubator.

Our first group included 25 articling students living in 15 different BC communities, supported by 16 supervising lawyers, four staff members and dozens of volunteer mentors.

Our model was designed to be different from traditional articling. Through a six-month learning semester, clinicians developed the practical, modern-day skills needed to build and operate socially responsible legal practices. They trained in a wide range of areas involving everyday legal problems, including family, employment, tenancy, criminal, consumer, wills and estates, corporate, human rights and mental health law.

In November 2022, our first cohort of 15 articling clinicians began a six-month service semester helping people with their legal problems. By then, a second cohort of 10 clinicians had already begun their learning semester.

Growing—and continuing to learn

By September 2026, 53 articling clinicians had enrolled in the Clinic, serving people in more than 30 communities across British Columbia on their path toward becoming lawyers.

We are still writing our history.

As the Clinic continues to forge its own path in BC's legal sector, we remain committed to building services around the people who use them. That means listening to clients, seeking constant feedback, learning from what works and what does not, and continually refining our approach.

Our goal has remained the same from the beginning: to help build a legal system in which more people can find the help they need—and more legal professionals can build meaningful, sustainable practices serving the communities that need them most.