Interview with Matt Cohen

David Milosevic

Good morning Matt, thank you for joining the Ontario Bar Association Civil Litigation Section today and sitting down for this interview on access to justice.

Matt Cohen

David, thanks so much. It's great to be with you. And I'm compelled to say, you're particularly qualified to ask questions on this topic as somebody who has poured thousands of hours into directly providing access to justice, to folks who would otherwise go without it.

David Milosevic

Well, I appreciate that plug and as they say, I haven't paid for it. Thank you. Just, I want to get a little bit of a background Matt, can you tell me a little bit about Pro Bono Ontario, how long it's been around, the types of clients it serves and perhaps you can tell me first about your role with Pro Bono Ontario.

Matt Cohen

Certainly. So big year for Pro Bono Ontario, this is our 20th anniversary year. We're a registered Ontario charity founded in 2001, with just the typical shoestring desk and a phone and an executive director, who's still our executive director Lynn Burns. And we've evolved into a still small but much larger organization that's now providing civil non-family legal services to folks in Ontario who can't afford a lawyer and don't qualify for legal aid. My role there is to oversee the legal services, I'm a civil litigator by training and background, spent time at a large firm, spent time at a small firm before I joined PBO in 2010. So my role involves managing the delivery of legal services that facilitate access to justice by linking pro bono lawyers with clients who need them. And in my role as staff lawyer, as is the case with my other colleagues who are licensees, we also roll up our sleeves and directly provide legal services to clients.

Matt Cohen

So importantly, and in terms of our area, we've historically sought to compliment and not duplicate the services of legal aid. So that's why it's important to keep in mind that we're in the civil non-family area, which also happens to be, according to studies over the years, the highest area of unmet legal need in Ontario.

David Milosevic

Yeah a statistic I saw was that all of legal aid, spending for legal services 9% went towards civil non-family. So not a lot of spending directed toward that area that Pro Bono Ontario was covering.

Matt Cohen

That's right. That's very interesting, but I wouldn't have even guessed a number that high. There used to be, as you probably know, a civil certificate program where folks could get an opinion on the merits of the civil case and perhaps get representation. That program has been discontinued. So certainly if you count things like housing and employment in civil non-family there's certainly some legal aid contribution in those areas. But I would certainly stand by that sentiment, that essentially civil non-family is unsupported by legal aid and has kept us very busy. So self-represented litigants in the civil courts, residential housing, employment, consumer protection, estates. And we can't forget about the legal needs of charities, nonprofits, and small businesses, not on a dispute side, but on the side of legal issues that really help those enterprises thrive and ensure that they're not spending money they don't have on legal resources.