Law Foundation Graduate Fellowships
The Law Foundation will issue up to six graduate fellowship awards of up to $17,000 for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Applicants must either be:
- graduates of a British Columbia law school;
- members of the British Columbia Bar;
- currently attending, or will be attending at the time of their Fellowship, a graduate program at UBC or University of Victoria law school (with the exception of a graduate program whose purpose is to provide National Committee on Accreditation equivalency to practice law in Canada); or,
- residents of British Columbia. For the purposes of the Fellowships, a resident of BC is anyone who is a permanent resident of Canada, and either currently resident in British Columbia or a person who has been resident in British Columbia for a significant amount of their life.
To be eligible, applicants must devote themselves primarily to their full-time graduate studies in law or a law-related area. A current recipient of a Legal Research Fund grant from the Foundation is ineligible to receive a Graduate Fellowship.
The complete funding notice can be found here.
Applications can be made here. Applications will open on October 11, 2021. All material must be included in your application and submitted no later than midnight on January 7, 2022.
The Fort St. John Women’s Resource Society Celebrates its 40th Year
Legal services for northern British Columbians are chronically inadequate in comparison to those available to citizens in the south. The vast land area comprising what we know as the “North” means that many communities are underserviced, often resulting in barriers in accessing legal assistance and advocacy. In many ways this story rings true, but despite this the team at the Fort St. John Women’s Resource Society is making strides to shift this reality and provide the tools their community needs to advance equality, safety, and well-being through education, advocacy, and social justice.
Celebrating its 40th year in service, the Fort St. John Women’s Resource Society is a non-profit organization that works with low-income clients of all genders. Led by Executive Director Amanda Trotter, the Society now operates a drop-in centre, a housing program for women and children leaving abusive situations, an outreach store offering free clothing and necessities, and hosts several therapeutic wellness programs open to all. The Fort St. John Women’s Resource Society also houses busy Poverty Law and Family Law Advocacy programs, funded by the Law Foundation of British Columbia.
The Foundation began funding a network of legal advocacy programs to fill in the service gap left by the defunding of legal aid clinics in 2002. The Fort St. John Women’s Resource Society has housed the Poverty Law Advocacy program, now headed by legal advocate Melody Blaney, since 2006. The Family Law Advocacy Program has been in operation since 2018 and is led by legal advocate Telitha Nielsen. Fort St. John has faced challenges over the course of the pandemic as affordable housing and family violence crises mean many more individuals are in need of accessible legal services, making the legal services the Society provides even more critical. The Fort St. John Women’s Resource Society programs are well known across the province as among the most robust, engaged, and attuned to their community. We are inspired by their service and hope that the entire BC legal community will be looking on to see the impact they cultivate in their next 40 years of service