Calling for Change: Women, Law, and the Legal Profession

15. Barriers Between Feminist Clients and Feminist Lawyers: or, What Class Are You In?

263 CHAPTER 15 BARRIERS BETWEEN FEMINIST CLIENTS AND FEMINIST LAWYERS: OR, WHAT CLASS ARE YOU IN? Jane Doe* I addressed the subject of feminist clients and feminist lawyers at the “ReImagining Touchstones” conference, which took place in O
awa in March of 2004, some thirty years aer my generation dared to imagine feminism at all. I spoke from a place of lived experience as the litigant in the civil lawsuit Jane Doe v. Metropolitan Toronto Police Force.1 I sued the police for negligence and sex discrimination in the investigation of my rape that took place in 1986. And I won. But it took twelve years, and my differences with legions of lawyers were—well, they were legion. As a non-academic, non-legal practitioner, I spoke from a marginalized place on the panel and at the conference. Mix in my “difficult client” history with the women of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), who supported and financed my case for the first nine years, many of whom were si
ing in the audience, and my outsider status is be
er explained. I also spoke as a woman whose work experience has been in what is still referred to—if nostalgically—as grassroots or front-line feminism, or, more recently, the anti-violence sector. By that I mean community-based agencies, primarily shelters and rape crisis centres, that employ women to work from a feminist, anti-oppressive perspective—a fading ideal in the Ontario of the new millennium. Today, feminist practice and belief are seen by many as anachronisms, not quite retro, just old-fashioned—replaced almost completely by medical and social work models in education, practice, and service delivery. Feminist legal practice has presumably undergone similarly drastic changes. 264 Practising Change My task was to apply my analyses as an anti-violence worker and feminist client in order to illustrate how this devolution has affected women who report rape and enter the legal system. I was not alone at the conference in my community member location. Lee Lakeman, Kim Pate, and other women I do not know as well as Lee and Kim were there among the majority of academics and lawyers. The event was organized by Liz Sheehy, a professor of law at the University of O
awa who is a feminist beacon, an ally, and a friend. How to explain then, my keen sense of displacement, unease—something like loneliness. I was part of the opening plenary session called “Women’s Relationship to the Legal Profession,” and I spoke last, just aer Professor Patricia Monture surprised and delighted me with her directive that we find creative and compassionate ways to address the topic because the old methods are not working, especially for Aboriginal women. I began by celebrating what I did gain from working with feminist lawyers, the things that bound us, the politics that I would never find in a traditional law firm, the excitement of the challenges we faced, and our accomplishments. The honour and the glory of it all, for it was oen both and in large measures. I count as revolutionary the style and content of the Statement of Claim in my lawsuit against the police. It is a powerful example of feminist collaboration that resulted in accessible lawyering. I oversaw its development as a legal document, and it was produced in conjunction with feminist grassroots organizations.2 My contract with LEAF was also remarkable. I insisted and they agreed that they would not use language or arguments that I could not understand. The power embedded in legal language is deliberate and designed to exclude. But there were problems, inherent rigidities enforced by law and class differences, which separated us politically. One such differential was that their work on my case was, by and large, paid, and mine was not. The income disparities between us as women are huge. Because our collaboration was instrumental in the success of my case, I told the conference that it is only reasonable that clients be paid for such work. I went on in my presentation to identify client-solicitor relationships as power-based and unequal, the lawyer holding information about language and using precedents that spring from patriarchal codes. I suggested that the legal notion that the client directs the case—something akin to the Holy Grail in legal practice—is simply that: a notion. But that fact that it is a fiction is something...