Nuanced. - 6. Kevin Westell: Bencher, Lawyer & Community Leader

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

Kevin Westell is a father, fiance, community member and lawyer. Mr. Westell is a founding partner at Pender Litigation in Vancouver, BC. Similarly, he gives back to the legal community in multiple ways. For example,  Mr. Westell teaches trial advocacy skills to law students. He serves as president of the Advocate's Club and much more. In this conversation, Mr. Westell is asked about his involvement in the community, and personal background. Mr. Westell and I also discuss criminal law and the court system, in a Canadian context. More specifically, we analyze the overarching roles of Crown Counsel, Defence Counsel and the Judiciary. For more information on Mr. Westell visit:https://www.penderlitigation.com/lawyers/kevin-westell/Find him on LinkedIn at:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-westell-50924613/?originalSubdomain=caSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=35374462&fan_landing=true)Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Hello, friends, and thank you for listening. My guest today is a father, a fiancé, a strong community member, and a lawyer. You may recognize him as lead counsel for Jamie Bacon. This conversation shed a light on criminal law, our court system, community, and education. I had an awesome time talking to him, and I hope you get a lot out of it. I know I did. Please give it up for my guest, Kevin Westall. And we're live.

You are a lawyer that I met locally. I'm hoping we could start with a brief introduction of yourself. Sure. Well, thanks very much for having me on. First of all, it's a real honor to be here, and I've gotten a chance to listen and watch some of the other episodes, and it's just fantastic work, and it's great to see. someone like yourself, someone that I know, put all this together and just do such a positive thing with the contacts you have and the contacts you've made and the skill set you have. So it's a thrill to be on with you. I am, as you mentioned, I'm a lawyer. I'm based in downtown Vancouver. I grew up in Coquitlam, so no stranger to the lower mainland. What do you want me to start with my sort of personal history or my profession? Yeah, sure. If we could start there and then you can work through.

For sure. Happy to you. I grew up in Coquitlam, as I said. My dad was a newest Mr. Firefighter. My mom worked and still works at Van City Credit Union in Burnaby. Our house was a great place to grow up with a little brother. He's not so little anymore, but a brother, a younger brother who is an engineer now. But we grew up in Coquitlam on the border of Coquitlam, Burnaby, New West in Port Moody, went to high school in Port Moody. Our house was a house where sports was a big thing.

It wasn't sort of everything, luckily, but it was a big deal. And basketball was my sport growing up. I feel, I constantly feel, especially, and I'll come back around to this, based on the experiences I've had in law and criminal law, you know, you start to realize in a way that you can't realize when you're growing up how much, if you have a good home situation with positive role models and a family that. that, you know, loves you unconditionally and puts the interests of the kids first, you know, you didn't, I didn't realize at the time just how lucky I was and have been. And my parents are still a huge part of my life. I still see them all the time. And, you know, it was just a really positive place in a great household to grow up in.

That's awesome. Yeah. Okay. So let's get started into the background of how you came to go to law school. What was middle school, high school experiences like? Sure. You know, I always tell people that I wish that I had some lightning bolt moment where I understood that, you know, law was, that I was perfectly built for law or law was sort of the answer for me. But, you know, I really, growing up, I always loved history. I loved people. I loved English and history. I was never someone that was drawn like my brother is and was to science or mathematics. So I loved, you know, the story of people. You know, people that make mistakes, people that get second chances, you know, the mistakes of history and how they are improved upon or unfortunately relived.

And I loved, you know, studying that in junior high and high school. And that's what I studied in undergrad. And I played basketball in university. And I've always regretted that I didn't. I loved being an athlete in university. I played basketball at Simon Fraser for a little bit. And then University of Manitoba after that, I really was pretty focused on. on playing basketball and enjoying myself and didn't take my studies that seriously. I did fine, but if I could do it again, and certainly when my son is in university, I'm going to try to encourage him to be more involved in campus life, being more involved and more focused on what really interests you and turns you on about the substance of what you're studying. I got that in law school. I got lucky in the sense that I went into law school because I just got a sense after my finishing playing basketball and finishing my undergrad degree well. I don't want to be a historian. I don't think I want to be, although teaching is interesting

to me. I didn't want to be a high school teacher. So I decided to try law school and found something that I loved and really loved the opportunity in that second degree to dive into school and really be focused on my school, my studies, and enjoy it. So I'm sort of all over the place with my answer there. What was that like in terms, you switched from SFU all the way to the University of Manitoba. That's not a jump most people I think make. Well, it was a, the decision was related to like many decisions that I made at that time of my life to playing basketball. And Simon Fraser was a very, very, very strong team that was attracting people from all over the country. And I was a good player, but not a great player. And Manitoba presented a, an opportunity at that school to go away,

which was an experience I wanted to have to get away, and to probably contribute more. to make a bigger contribution to that team. Okay. And so it was a great, it was a great experience for me. Between my undergrad and law school, I was out there for the better part of six years. And I love Winnipeg. I've still got friends in Winnipeg. It's a Winnipeg is near and dear to my heart.

And I do cases in Winnipeg occasionally too. Really? What is that like? You know, it's, there's funny little conventions about courtroom procedure and the way that their system works. But, you know, criminal law is what I practice. primarily, and criminal law is the same all over the country. There's one criminal code, as you know. So it's always surprising how similar it is,

even though you're in a totally different place with totally different people and 2,000 kilometers away from here, but it's a criminal trial is a criminal trial. Yeah, fair enough. Let's do a little bit of the personal life and then we'll get into it. What is, you have a son? I do. I have a son who is six years old.

Walter, who's fantastic and just like the best thing ever in my life. I've got a fiancé named Andrea. She's a lawyer as well. We live in Strathcona in the downtown east side of Vancouver, which is a place that's a really interesting place to live. We love it because there's a real sense of community there. I'm a part of the Community Center Association, and I love that neighborhood, but it's a neighborhood that, you know, as an extension of being part of the downtown east side, obviously there's challenges. There's a real, I don't want to say conflict, but a real dichotomy between some people that have wealth, some people that own property, some people that are renters and sort of just enjoy it as a place that's close to downtown. And there's some people that have lived there a long, long time that don't have much and that have addictions problems that are pretty well documented.

So it's a really interesting and beautiful and heartbreaking place to spend time. But we love being there and having our family there. And I've been there for about, I was in the west side of Vancouver before that, but I've been there for about, let's say four years. And it's a big part of where my attention is what's going on in Strathcona. How did you meet your fiancé? We met online, actually. I'm divorced. And after the end of my first marriage, I was single for a period of time. And we met online through Match.com. But I don't know if you remember, if you've ever experienced these apps, but this particular app sort of shows you how many friends in common you have on social media.

And when Andrea and I connected, you know, it was, it was startling how many mutual friends we had, which was really odd. It was almost a complete anomaly that we didn't know each other already because of all the other people that you had interacted with. She'd been an athlete at Simon Fraser in volleyball a few years apart from when I was there. So we had a lot of mutual former athlete friends. And then she's a lawyer as well. So we had sort of mutual friends in that arena.

And, you know, it was, it's just, she's just fantastic. And we are engaged and we're going to be, you know, hopefully planning a wedding right now. But with the pandemic happening, we don't know quite when or what that's going to look like. So we're not sort of in a massive hurry and hadn't laid any sort of solid plans yet for a wedding, but we're trying to figure out when and how that can happen given the pandemic. Fair enough. How was that first meeting like? Oh, it was great.

I remember I met her at Matchstick Coffee in Chinatown. And I met her for a dog walk. And I was drawn to her immediately. And I've never lost that feeling since I first met her. She was with when I first met her, Zola, which is now our dog, our Bouvier-Poodle cross, which I fell in love with as well right away. So the three of us live in Strathcona and love it. How long did it take to move in together? I think it was about a year and a half before we moved in together.

I mean, I think it was just a natural transition. Yeah, it just felt. Everything felt, right? For sure. That's awesome. What other family dynamics do you have? Because I think one of the problems that people often run into is that they're interacting with a lawyer and they know nothing about kind of who the person is in the background. And I think that that would be useful for people to have a better understanding. Well, you know, I'm someone that, I mean, I won't go into it in any great detail, but I'm someone that's gone through a separation of divorce where there was a child of that marriage, which is like, an incredibly painful thing. And I would say, sort of, to anybody that I've, that I act for,

that, you know, whether or not it's sort of a main part of, of what's going on for them in their case or something that sort of is part of their background or their set of experiences, it's, it's, you know, I learned a lot through that process about myself and about what, how difficult it is from the perspective of just your personal and emotional life and also what, you know, the difficulties that come with, the legal process of, of, of, of, of, of, of up a marriage. And I think that's led to me having a more informed empathy, not just a sympathy, but a more informed empathy for people that have gone through that process. I mean, I'm not a family lawyer, but family law issues often circle around, surround, inform the context of the criminal

files that I defend and prosecute. So, I mean, that's one family dynamic. Like I said, I think, you know, I'm not going to get into a huge philosophical conversation about nature versus nurture, but it is my belief that criminality is driven in a large part by the experiences you have growing up. Absolutely. There's just no doubt about that to my mind. And don't get me wrong, I know lots of people that have been accused or committed crimes that had perfectly fine upbringings, but most of the ones that you, that I come into contact

with are people that didn't have much of a chance growing up. And I think I'm going to probably repeat, come back to this theme over. and over again, but in terms of a family dynamic in my home, I had two incredible role models in my parents. What were they like? What were they like? They, my mom and dad are just fantastic people. They're very competitive people. They're very warm and funny people, both with great sense of humors. You know, they were both former athletes in their 20s, you know, people that were both sort of curious about the world and interested in the news and what was going on and politics and world events were always something that was discussed in our home.

You know, they're healthy people and really, really loving people. My dad, my dad retired as the assistant chief at, sort of the number two at the New Westminster Fire Department. And he loved being a firefighter, but he also loved sort of the intellectual challenge of doing fire inspection work, being sort of a fire investigator as part of the work he did. And he found that to be interesting. And I know that he loved his work in that regard. And one of the biggest community role models you can get is a firefighter.

For sure. Yeah. And we love that growing up and, you know, being able to visit my dad at the fire department and seeing the trucks and meeting my dad's colleagues there and being involved in the firefighter community and the family events that would happen. I always felt really lucky to be a part of that. And my mom, my mom is, was an incredibly involved parent. You know, she was the ultimate. PTA mom. And it was not uncommon for me to see my mom at my school, my school, meeting with the staff, meeting with, meeting with the teachers for PTA type things and leading the PTA group. She was a, she still is a competitive golfer. She spends a lot of time and puts in a lot of hard work, practicing her craft. She was a two-time Canadian junior amateur champion in the 70s, and she'll be the first person to tell you that if you run into her. I say that. With love, you know, she's got this side of her that's very competitive, but also a very, very warm and loving side. And it's the same with my dad. My dad was a, my dad played in the CFL for a year. He was a competitive amateur wrestler in university. Like they both, they both love sports and are competitive and really, I don't remember them ever having to tell us how important it was to work hard at whatever you wanted to do, whether it was athletics or school or anything. But it was just sort of part of the, Lead by example.

Yeah, ethic of our household. It wasn't really sort of something that you felt an option around or felt that there was any choice in. And it didn't feel like negative pressure. It just felt like, oh, there's a clear, I don't remember how and when I learned that you have to work your tail off to get the things that are worth getting in life. But I know I just always felt that way. And I know that my parents embody that. That's awesome. Yeah.

Your mom also operated at Van City. And I don't think a lot of people realize how different Van City is from TD in terms of local investment and trying to grow locally. Did you ever get to experience or talk to your mom about that? You know, recently, I mean, my mom is at Branch 16, the North Road branch. And she does a lot of the social media work for them now and does for that particular branch. And she's often the representative of the branch having been there forever. Like she's been at that branch since I was, before I was in elementary school. A big part of her job now is to be sort of an ambassador for that branch and for Van City at different events in the community.

And so she loves that part of what they do and being, and she loves to be a part of what they've built in terms of being progressive and being a leader in the community, as opposed to just being about dollars and cents. I think that's so important because I know a lot of locals here, even at Caltyre, where to me, they do represent the brand of Caltyre or whatever, wherever they're working. For sure. And I think that that's so important, but it's something that I think is getting smaller and smaller. I'm not seeing as much buildup of the community and local people representing their

community at that branch. So I'm really glad to hear that. The next thing I was going to move to was law is a huge topic to a lot of people and we're probably the most famous for being the most intimidating in terms of being in the legal world. So I was hoping we could break it down for people so they can have an understanding of where you start. So we kind of start with our LSATs or trying to do well in our bachelor's degree. And then we move on to the LSATs. What was that like for you? Well, sort of going back to what I had said, my undergrad, I enjoyed what I studied studying history in undergrad, but I wish I had worked a little bit harder at those classes. And I did well enough to get into law school, but I wasn't in a situation where I didn't need

to do well on the LSAT, which I eventually did. But it took me a number of times to write the L-SAT. The L-SAT, the skill set to write the L-Sat isn't something that comes naturally to me. And I, you know, I'll say this next thing not to sound arrogant anyway, but, you know, I got quite high marks in law school and was on the dean's list. I struggled at first with the L-Sat, which is to me an important message to tell people that find the L-Sat. Like some people I know, like the L-Sat comes easy to them, some people that doesn't. I do tell people that because if the L-Sat is a challenge to you, it does not mean that you're going to struggle in law school and people should know that. It's a different skill set. It's a unique skill set. In some ways, it's a bit of a,

I find it to be a bit of an arbitrary set of hoops to jump through. But, you know, on, after a couple trials, tries, I did well enough on the LSAT to get in. You know, for me, when it comes to law school, the biggest adjustment was going from undergrad where there was, of course, reading you had to do and exams you had to write. But just the, the volume of reading, I'm sure you felt this as well, was just extreme to me. I was going to contrast it with, I think that they've changed the curriculum quite a bit. Yeah. Because from my understanding, when you would have went, it would have been like a nine to four type of class.

Yes. Mine was 9 to 1230. That sounds a lot better. So it's half the amount of reading. And it was a lot lighter and it was a lot more comparable to my bachelor's than I expected because everyone that I had worked with as a native court worker recognized, well, that's eight hours day. and then you go home and you study for four more hours and you wake up and you do it all again, where mine was like I was driving out from Chilac all the way to law school and then driving home

at the end of the day. And I still had recreational time. So it's very different now. Well, that's good. I mean, I think that's, sorry to cut you off. I think that's a good thing because the first year you sort of spend just sort of figuring out, like unless you're some sort of a speed reader, like you're not, no one is sitting there in my view and reading every word of every piece of reading when the time frame is the way it was or the timeline the crick and the was the way it was when I got through. So you really have to learn to be efficient in the way you approach reading research and how to sort of, you know, read, you know, skim until you get to the parts that are really important. Focus in on that. Recognize what's important. Recognize

where you find in a given case the crux of anything, you know, whether or not for the particular project or issue you're working on whether or not the facts of that case are entirely important or It's just about getting to the part where a certain principal is described by the justice that's written to, you know, the decision that you're reading for your, for your readings for law school. So it was an adjustment for me in the first semester to sort of just take on the idea of reading, having to read that much, having that much work assigned to you on a night by night basis. But, you know, I worked my tail off. And by the second year, you sort of start to say, I don't know a few experiences. Now I'm sort of enjoying it. I understand what the expectations are around reading.

understand what the end product of these exams is going to require me to distill and be able to apply. And then you can sort of enjoy the intellectual experience of learning from your classes and seeing how the law, you know, all the different ways that law interacts with society. Exactly. Yeah. Because I do think that most courses have like a meta theme in which there is an overarching thing. You should be trying to distill from all the cases that you're reading. For sure. I think it's also useful for people to know that. When you are reading a case, a lot of the time during first year, they teach you an approach called FIRAC or I'm not sure if it was the same, but it's facts issue, rule or ratio, application, and

conclusion. Right. And you basically go through and you read a case with that mindset. What are the important facts? What are the issues of this case? For sure. What is the rule that the judge has made or that the Supreme Court is made? Yeah.

So what was coming out of that, heading for an articling position, because we do three years of law school, and then you move on to an articling position, or did you get a summer position prior to that? No, I didn't do a summer position. I had a good job working for the city of Richmond, just working for the health department in public health and dealing with sort of rodent control and mosquito control. And, you know, to me, I was going to be able to make more money doing that and felt like that was the priority in my life right then to make sure that I had some savings. Because I know that, you know, well, it's no secret that articling in general in BC, especially in criminal law where I went, it's really meant to feel like a true apprenticeship.

You're not making a lot of money that year. So I wanted to focus on my making sure that I was financially secure before my articling year. But articling was an interesting experience. I wanted to be a criminal lawyer. At the time that I went, I was going to law school. I was fairly sure that I wanted to do work for the province and be a prosecutor because there was a family friend that was a big influence on me. And I felt that's what I wanted to do. Not because of any sort of philosophical bent about having a preference to prosecutions versus defense work, but just from where I sat, that was where the role model was. And I knew I wanted to do criminal law because, you know, the excitement, you know, there's a certain excitement of criminal files and, you know, a dynamism to what, you know, it's in the newspaper every day. And it's, you know, there's interesting things that are going on in the world with criminal law and articling positions with the crown are very few and far between.

It was basically accepted that you're probably going to have to article at a criminal defense firm if you wanted to get to the prosecution service eventually. So I went to and I got the opportunity to work with a lawyer named Glenn Orris, who was a QC, a Queens Council, which is in this province and in most provinces and in many other countries in the Commonwealth. It's just a designation for, you know, sort of lawyers that are recognized as elite in a number of different categories, including skill and ability. but also contributions to the profession and things like that. So I was a pleasure to work for Glenn. I articled for him, and he has always been involved in interesting and relatively high-profile cases. And, you know, I loved working for him,

and I was prepared to still apply for the Crown afterwards. But Glenn was very, very good to me and offered me the opportunity to work as a independent contractor for the year after I finished articling, and he charged me no rent for that year, which is incredibly unique in an opportunity that just wasn't going to come along again. And I thought, you know, as much as I'm interested in working for the Crown at that time, I thought, you know, there'll be other opportunities to apply for the Crown,

but I'm not going to get an opportunity to sort of get a rolling start on a law practice in the private bar like this again. And I should see this through. So I did that. And I ended up staying with Glenn for four more years. We worked on really interesting cases I got to work on a case called Lilgert, which is the public would know that case because it's about a BC ferry

called the Queen of the North that collided with an island and sunk and Mr. Lilgert, who was our client, was charged with criminal negligence causing death because two people that were on the ferry were never found and are assumed and were in fact declared dead and that was a six-month jury trial

that was fascinating. What was it like to get that case right that day? You know, the case was already with in Glenn's office when I got there and took some time to get to trial. But it was, you know, first of all, let me say, like, I don't want to, for one minute, you know, suggest that my interest in the case or the excitement of that case. You know, I don't want to sound disrespectful of the people who passed away

because that's, you know, a horrendous thing that happened to them. And I don't mean to sound insensitive about that in any way, shape, or form. But as a litigator, you know, you know, being completely frank with you, the issues in that case, the scope of that case, the public interest in that case, the uniqueness of that case, you know, the case that most lawyers will be attracted to because it's just it's an opportunity to to engage beyond sort of your average criminal case you know we had to learn things and examine witnesses not just about you know the facts of what happened on the night of the collision but

also how does how does notical navigation work what systems are in place within the ferry what system, you know, in what way is the, the operators of the ferry, the crew of the ferry interacting with external agencies to ensure the safe passage of a ferry, especially up the inside passage of British Columbia. So we learned all sorts of things about the equipment and the equipment that's used on a ferry and it was just a fascinating experience, and it was the first, it was the first jury trial that of any it was the first significant jury trial I ever got to

deal with in cross-examining witnesses in front of a jury is is really unnerving and it was a great I had a great opportunity to learn how to do that on that file as well that's awesome I do think that people often misunderstand lawyers when they're talking about a case because they think that the lawyer is more focused on the facts of the case and the sensationalness of it where I think oftentimes it's way more about the issues of what are all the relationships going on on a boat, who's responsible,

and can you hold someone responsible in these very unique, very random circumstances that you're not thinking of when you're just sitting on a ferry heading across town. So I think that's important for people to understand is that's more where people are coming from when they're passionate about a case or something and that it doesn't make the person on the other side of the trial evil for wanting to represent that side. is that there are interesting issues going on, that it's important for us to reflect on personally and for the lawyers to argue professionally, because we should reflect on what is the role of this person in this position and what were they supposed to do?

Totally. And get it more. And to what extent were they trained? Were they trained sufficiently, you know, extensively to be in a position to do the job correctly, like where they put in a position where they had the training they needed to deal with the situation that they were dealing with? I mean, you know, at the end of the day, the jury convicted Mr. Lilgert, and he's done his time, and it was a very stressful and traumatic thing to him.

And it was a horrible, horrible thing for those who went through it and survived. And I can't even imagine the experience of the deceased or their loved ones through it. You know, it's one of these, it was startling to see a tragedy like that happens. You know, you just watched, you know, you see a hundred or so witnesses come through the witness box, and all of them in a different way. depending on what their relationship was with the event, their lives were completely changed by that incident. And it's something where you just sort of end up feeling a sense of awe to how a tragedy like this can just completely upend or rearrange people's lives or how people approach life going forward. Well, and that's true.

And the case with newspapers and media in general doesn't, I think, do justice to what it's probably like to be in a room like that. and to hear not just one witness's opinion, but all of them and this change in the feeling of the room when they start to talk about those things. Yeah, for sure. And I think that that's important for people to understand that that's the meat of what's going on in a courtroom is more education of what exactly happened from everybody's perspective. Yeah, I mean, the trial is meant to be a truth-seeking engine. You know, we have an adversarial system of law wherein, you know, the sense of it, the wisdom of it, whether you agree with our system or not, is that, through, you know, the examination across examination of witnesses, you know, we're more likely than not to get to the bottom of what the truth is.

And through that process, you learn things that you expect and you learn things that you don't expect to learn about how people process an event and remember an event and the extent to which trauma has affected their memory of an event and the extent to which the trauma has affected their perception of the criminal justice system at large. Absolutely. And I think that that's the cornerstone of the right to freedom of speech is that we can have these disagreements. We can come from completely different mindsets and arrive hopefully at some sort of middle ground, never the perfect way where everyone's 100% happy, but a middle ground that works hopefully for everyone. Yeah. And, you know, look, I mean, I do a lot of criminal defense work. And for me, you're going to have clients that the public's made their mind up about before. a single witness is heard in their trial. And sometimes that's disheartening. Sometimes it's just expected and understood. But it's our job to proceed and give those clients the best possible

defense and sort of exercise of their rights that we possibly can. You really can't get into a, you know, it's really not unethical for us to say, like, based on what we personally think of a given client, you know, we're going to tailor what level of service they get. That's not how our system works. Our system would fall apart if that's what we did. I mean, sometimes we have clients Any lawyer has clients who's sort of got personality defects that make it difficult to get along with them or communicate with them, even in that situation, like, you know, you can't penalize them. A lot of our clients, honestly, I say this all the time. If they had incredibly good judgment, they wouldn't have found themselves in a situation often where they need our help. And that's not everybody. There's some people that, you know, get accused unjustly or get into a difficult situation that, you know, developed relatively organically. But there's lots of, that's not everybody. accuse people that come before the courts, you know, usually that eventually are convicted. And, you know, they have made a mistake. And they do have issues around communication and judgment and may have personality disorders and things like that. And it's our job to help them

no matter what because they have constitutional rights. And beyond just sort of leaning back on the Constitution, just sort of as an extension of being a human being, people deserve a hand. People need a hand. And people may have done, made a mistake. It may have made a serious mistake. But we as a society, you know, it's not our job to leave those people behind. Yeah, we're rehabilitation. Yeah. Absolutely. There's a way to, you know, our legal system is meant to say, you've made a mistake. Are you in a situation where that mistake can be proven against you? Yes or no. If it can be, you know, and you're going to need to take responsibility for something here. How do you do that? How do you help yourself to take the responsibility for

that and start the rehabilitation process either before you take responsibility? and show the core that you've got some insight into the mistake you've made. And how do you ensure that the police or the crown haven't made an honest error in charging your client with a more serious infraction than they've actually committed? That's a piece of our work as well. Absolutely. One of the other parts, because we're talking about this, is that you obviously deal with a disproportionate population of people who have actually committed a crime. And so I think that that probably requires a mindset of, I'm going into work today and I'm going to be seeing people who are just like police officers deal with a disproportionate amount of people committing crime.

What is that like for you in terms of trying to make sure that you keep a healthy mental health state when you leave work and you remember that not all people have that mindset? What is that like? Well, you know, Aaron, it's an interesting question. I think that there's a number of different ways to go at it. I mean, people commit crime in so many different ways and for so many different. reasons. And, you know, I've defended people that, in the past, that psychologically, you know, are in a difficult place, have a dark view of the world, and they may have high conflict personalities. And those people, it does, it does take a toll on you to be spending a lot of time in that

high conflict space, because there's sometimes where you've got a client that's got those issues, and you may have conflict, conflict of some kind with your opposition in the case, conflict, you know, with your clients. And it is difficult from a wellness situation to come home and try to sort of have a normal interaction with your family after you've been dealing with that all day. You've got to find ways to take care of yourself to make sure that that doesn't infect your ability to sort of take a deep breath and reenter family life when you get home from work and sort of you're not, I don't want to say taking out, but, you know, unduly forcing your

family to deal with your response to that high conflict. situation you've been in all day. That's one, that's one sort of way to look at it. But I don't, you know, I don't think, you know, I think we all, we all encounter sociopaths and psychopass in our lives. And I think that we do so, they're relatively rare. And they're relatively rare, even in the work that I do. You know, in terms of going to work and being like, I'm going to be dealing with people that are accused of or have committed crimes. A lot of the people that I deal with are people that are decent people that have judgment issues and have come from a place of poverty and that it has informed and caused them to see things around property crime and and drug

crime differently than that someone that had the upbringing I did so I've got a lot of sympathy for them I'm not there to suggest that you know ever that breaking the law is okay but you know I don't think it doesn't take a lot out of me to deal with those types of people those types of people because I've got a lot of empathy for them and I wouldn't be in this line of work if I didn't want to help them with whether it be helping them with sort of taking responsibility for what they've done or making sure that their rights were respected by the police or just ensuring that if they've got a defense that it's properly put before the court and they've got their day in court. I mean you've got to remember that part of this all is whether or not you

lose, win or lose, for many people, just the act, you know, of being able to be heard in a court that sort of the police officer that arrested them doesn't get the last word. It's the judge that gets the last word after hearing what goes on in a courtroom. There's a real value to that just as an exercise in and of itself that people can ultimately, you know, they may be disappointed by the result, but maybe better prepared to accept it if they've had their opportunity to have their lawyer, try the case for them, have the judge hear their perspective on it if they testify, have the court hear their lawyer's arguments, and then make a decision, you know? And I think that there's a real social value just in that. Absolutely. As a court worker, I had the opportunity

to write what I called GLADU letters, which were a very shortened form of a GLADU report. Right. And a GLADU report was meant to explain to people what the background of the person was who was indigenous. It would be a more of a full summary. So I'd go into cells. I'd have a conversation with the person, I'd ask them a bunch of questions about their experience. And with one in particular, I wrote up the letter. I brought it upstairs. It was a sentencing. And I gave it to the judge.

The judge took 15 minutes to read it and came back and talked for probably half an hour, 45 minutes to the individual, to the accused about this was your whole life has been trying to fight for just survival, just food on the table. no washer, dishwasher, no dryer, nothing to keep your clothing dry, all of these small experiences that you and I just don't know what it's like not to have a dryer in our house, not to have an alarm clock. And I think it's important that that person is heard as well that, yes, you did commit a crime, but we, the court, understand that you've been through things we just don't understand when we have our alarm clocks and everything set up. And so I do think that that's incredibly valuable and something that you obviously share. One interesting thing I have to ask about is if you type in Kevin Westall, I'm not saying everybody's going to, but if you type in the name, it says Kevin Westall Bacon. Do you want to give us a little bit of context as to what people can expect?

Yeah, I mean, I do, and, you know, I've been, you know, speaking to the press about the case in the last couple weeks as well for a number of reasons. But I, one of my clients, um, is a man named James, uh, Bacon, who goes by Jamie Bacon. And, and Jamie Bacon is probably the most well-known person that's associated with gang life in, in the lower mainland and, and in particular with an offense, with a, with a tragedy that occurred call that's colloquially known as the Surrey 6 from 2008, where there was a gangland type shooting and several people that were involved in organized crime were killed, but also a number of innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, ultimately, were killed as a result of it as well. On the allegation of the, on the crown and the police allegation,

it's not that Mr. Bacon was present for that, or that carried it out directly, but that all of this happened as a result of a plan that he was allegedly part of, as part of his organized crime lifestyle. Recently, that case has been in the news because we ultimately elected to enter guilty plea to conspiracy to commit murder as opposed to, and Mr. and the Crown ultimately is not proceeding on the charge of murder. So it will lead to a significantly less serious sentence, but still one of, you know, a pretty serious sentence. He's going to do an 18-year sentence overall. But, I mean, I guess less interesting for our purposes than the facts of that cases, you know, today is more just like what the experience is of a defense counsel who's

representing someone where, that the public has made their mind up about one way or the other. And there's no doubt that they've got good reasons to make up their mind to some extent because, you know, at this point, he's entered a guilty plea and taken responsibility for his role in a very serious crime. And that's, you know, it's difficult to be in a position sometimes where people want to give you their negative opinion about your client unprompted. And it can be, it can be honestly frustrating and upsetting when people suggest that because you're representing that person or their idea of that, whatever that type of person is, that you are, as a lawyer, immoral for doing that. And, you know, I mean, you don't get into this business without having or developing very quickly a thick skin. And you have to.

And you have to believe deep down in the work that we do and why we do it and the ethics of. it and that and you have to appreciate that most people don't consider sort of, you know, what I would say is a real organizing principle of what we do is we're never, you know, a defense lawyer, if they represent someone that's accused of murder is never suggesting that they think murder is okay or any serious crime is okay. They're suggesting that they're embodying the idea that when somebody is accused, even with a strong case against them, of a very serious crime, whatever it is, then serious, serious consequences to that person

should naturally flow from that and do in our country. And when that's the case, it's seriously important that we make sure that the rights of that person who has so much at stake, that accused person, are properly enforced

and that nobody who's accused is convicted of a crime that's serious without a rigorous defense. That's a cornerstone of our democracy. And we don't, it's not our job to concern ourselves with whether or not, you know, the morality of the immorality of the alleged act is such that they don't want to be associated with that person. That's not our job. Our job is to be associated

with making sure that rights are respected. The law is followed and that justice is done to the extent of the law and to the extent of our Constitution. Well, and I think that's important for people to understand because we often get into this mindset, and I've seen it lots on social media of just like no need for a trial we know this person's guilty let's just throw them away put them in a hole that kind of idea it doesn't work for a lot of reasons one of which is the person's now sitting in the hypothetical hole and saying i wasn't treated fairly right so where is the personal responsibility if their mindset is the whole community just turned against me nobody heard my side of the story or what happened that night that's important to get on the table so

we can say that they were heard the other side was heard and we understand a little bit of what And I think that that's invaluable, but it is something where just doing your job every day, you have people approach you and unwarranted and unrequested to give their opinions of what they think of your clients who you are just trying to do your job and uphold the law just as much as Crown Counsel is. And I think that that often gets overlooked because there is a role to both sides of the courtroom. For sure. And, you know, I think that what gets lost as well is that the prosecution is doing an incredibly tough job themselves. And sometimes for reasons related to justice, to sort of their role as a quasi-minister of justice and related to their professional assessment of what is right and fair in the circumstances, and I'm not talking about any particular case when I make this comment, they strike a plea deal with the other side that's based on the efficiencies

of the situation and what they think is fair, what they think is an appropriate use of court resources and an accused person ends up pleading to something that's less than what they're charged with. And it takes an incredible amount of courage on the part of the crown to do that. You know, no one's throwing the crown to ticker tape parade for taking a plea to a lesser included on a serious crime. They're doing that not out of immorality or out of sort of a lack of diligence. They're doing that because in their professional opinion and in the use of their professional discretion, they've decided that this is what justice demands in the circumstances and they have to make decisions that are, they have to make decisions that are unpopular and

that's incredibly difficult as well. So the justice system, you know, you shouldn't get into criminal law on either side of the ball if you're there to be, you know, a hero, if you're there to be sort of beloved by the public. It's, you know, we're dealing with difficult situations, sometimes difficult people, victims and their families who are, you know, find themselves in very difficult circumstances, and it's very rare in life, let alone in criminal law, that everybody's going to be happy at the end of the day. And you have to sort of face up to that and be brave, whether you're a crown, your defense. And certainly, you know, obviously I've never been a judge, but I would expect that as a member of the judiciary,

you've got to be prepared to make decisions that you see and then see them be criticized by people that weren't in the courtroom, didn't hear all the evidence, you know, don't have the training they have. And so that's, you know, you shouldn't get into criminal justice on any level if you're there to be beloved by people who read about you in the press. That is, that is one experience I had, being a court worker that was so unique because I had started the position in Surrey and we did not interact very much with Crown at all. Right. And then I came to Chilawak and I was on my own, so I viewed it as let's try and build relationships where they're willing to build a relationship. And Crown was one of the closest people I worked with. Yeah. Because

they wanted to know what are actual long-term solutions for the person, and my role was to try and offer treatment, to offer resources, to offer AA meetings and all of those things. And Crown would be very open to sitting down and having that conversation and trying to figure out, how do we not have this person here tomorrow, the next week? And I don't think that they get that type of credit. But I also don't think that defense lawyers get the type of credit for reaching out to resources and trying to get their clients into treatment centers when they're struggling with addiction. or get AA meetings and get them connected.

So could you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that that part of your job goes a bit unnoticed. Yeah, I think it's a huge part of what we do. I mean, the sort of classic conception of a defense lawyer is that we're just sort of the classic... Lincoln lawyer type. Stereotypical conception of a lawyer is that they're constantly trying to help people to get away with something, which, you know, to the extent that you're trying to try to help your client get acquitted in any case, that's always, you know, at the top priority, of course, if the crown can't prove it,

your client shouldn't plead guilty to it. But in many situations where the case is strong, and there isn't perhaps a strong defense, but there is some strongly sympathetic circumstances. It is your job as defense counsel to take advantage of whatever resources your client can take advantage of to improve their situation, you know. And the court, you know, there's a tension here because the criminal justice system is really a poor. In many ways, it's not well designed to rehabilitate people. But despite that, you know, it can, the necessity of facing a criminal charge does help people to realize the urgency of

taking advantage of rehabilitative options. You know, when you've got someone that's charged with an offense, a relatively minor offense, let's say, related to being highly intoxicated, that can be a signifier to the people around that person and hopefully, the person themselves or perhaps the person themselves, that alcohol is having a negative effect on their life and that they're misusing alcohol. This is not every situation where alcohol is involved, but that's a lot of them. And so someone who's facing charges, who doesn't have a criminal record, perhaps, if they were to, while awaiting their day in court, they're, you know, before they dispose of it by pleading to something or going to trial, you know, if they reach out

to a court service worker and start getting themselves involved in AA, alcohol counseling, whether it's group or one-on-one, that can be an indicator to the crown and perhaps ultimately the judge that this person has some insight into what the root problem is here. And whether they do or not, you know, that they take the advantage of the opportunity to use those resources and improve themselves. And the idea can be that through spending that time, through doing that, you're taking advantage of that resource and improving themselves as a person and perhaps improving their relationship with substances like alcohol, society is made safer. And the Crown and the court may feel, may feel comfortable in

that situation saying that this person has in their own way taken an appropriate amount of responsibility for what took place in this relatively minor offense and should walk away from this offense having learned something, but not necessarily with a criminal record that could ruin their life. So I'm using alcohol for that as an example, but, you know, it may be an anger management issue. It may be drug abuse. It could be all sorts of things. Family counseling, there's all sorts of things that, you know, there are resources for that we can use to try to help our clients in that way. I'm not suggesting that everyone that commits a crime can go to counseling and make it go away. But in certain circumstances, counseling is a precursor to whatever

disposition there is to that trial is a helpful thing and an efficiency that helps everybody to make society safer. Yeah, I definitely saw a lot of that in the courts where just trying to set the person up, not just with one resource, but plenty so that they have options. We've touched a bit on the dichotomy between Crown and defense. You sometimes act as Crown in certain roles. I have no idea if I'll ever be able to get a Crown Counsel on to this podcast just because being part of government is very difficult in terms of communication. So I'm hoping that you can share a bit about what it's like to play both hats, defense and crown. Sure. I'm happy to do that. I feel very fortunate that the Ministry of the Attorney General turns to me to conduct prosecutions on their

behalf from time to time. It's what's called an ad hoc prosecutor. And that's been a tradition in our province for longer than I've been a lawyer. And I know that not all provinces do this. But the province does rely on certain members of the defense bar to conduct prosecutions when they've got a heavy inflow of files to deal with. And so I've been able to do that for the last 10 years, and it's been one of the best experiences of my career. And I think, you know, to me, and I mentioned this briefly, I don't have a, you know, philosophical predisposition that, you know, defense work is righteous work and crown work is not, or vice versa. Like, I think they both, many of my closest friends are defense counsel, and many of my closest friends are Crown Counsel. I just don't. You know,

I see either both sides is necessary completely, and it's vital to the health of our criminal justice system that both sides are strong and robust and doing their job to the greatest capacity, and there's going to be disagreements, and there's going to be personal conflict like in any profession. But I think we have a really great culture in terms of the relationship between the Crown and Defense in this province in a way that other provinces I've heard don't. In terms of solving problems and dealing with litigation in an efficient and a robust way when it's called to. But getting back to your question, you know, the opportunity to prosecute files is just a different way of coming at the criminal justice system. I mean, to me, as a lawyer, I look at it

in the tradition of sort of the English system of barristers where the attorney general ends up client like any of the client. And when they retain me to act for them in a prosecution, I have to have a clear understanding of what that entails. It's not the mere image of defense. It's not when at all costs. It's not law and order above all else. It's about sort of taking on for the purposes of that brief, the role of being a quasi-minister of justice and trying to figure out, regardless of the strength of the case you have, what is the right result? And the Crown Policy Manual is a lengthy document that informs our decision-making in that regard. You know, whether you're dealing with someone that's prepared to plead guilty or run a trial,

you are, you know, just simply engaging in the criminal justice system from the other side of things. It's challenging. It really gives you a sense of, I think it makes you a better defense lawyer to have spent some time prosecuting. And I'm not talking about sort of, oh, you've got sort of behind enemy lines intelligence. It's not that. It's more about sort of, you know, when dealing with the opposition as a defense counsel, I have more of an understanding of the strain that they're under where the pressure is for them. You have more empathy for the other side in terms of what they're dealing with in terms of communicating with, whether it's a victim or a victim's family and things like that. And I think it just makes you a better person

and a more well-rounded lawyer to be able to have dealt with both sides. And to me, I mean, it's the intellectual exercise of trying to come to a fair resolution of any situation. It's more interesting and dynamic to see these issues from both sides, to be balanced and have a sense of what's fair and what isn't. I mean, as a defense counsel, you've got a clear role. You know, you're there to be within the bounds of what's ethical, to be a fearless advocate for your client's rights. You know, when you're acting for the crown, your job is not to be a, just a fearless advocate for the police or the prosecution. It's to get to arrive at what is the fair result here. If you can prove a case where an offense was committed, you do that. And you try to

find a fair, you know, try to come to a position that's fair and correct as to what type of punishment that person should have. I don't find it to be, I don't find it to be a conflict in terms of my personal ethics at all. You know, I know when I'm in a courtroom and I, you know, I know whose case I'm arguing and I know what I'm there to do. And I try to do, it's to me about, you know, whoever the client is that I'm acting for that day, I'm going to give it my absolute best. And what my best is is not defined by winning and losing in terms of what the judge says at the end of the day. What my best is is defined by what does the context call for in the situation? That makes a lot of sense. And I think there's a lot of nuance there

in terms of looking at the states and having that kind of is our rubric of what a courtroom looks like because we are overly influenced by their criminal justice system where you do have elected attorneys and having that different relationship. Would you be able to touch on that at all from what you see watching movies like The Lincoln Lawyer and those types of things in comparison to Canada, which is, I would say, vastly different. Right. Well, I mean, you know, there's a couple different layers there. And one of the layers is that television programs are meant to entertain as much or more than they're meant to enlighten or educate. You have to keep that in mind that there's a certain extent to which those shows are going to be designed to entertain you and titillate you as much as they're designed to give you sort of a true and accurate reflection of the criminal justice system in either in either country.

You know, in terms of elected prosecutors, elected sheriffs, elected judges, you know, I don't have much expertise in that other than to sort of give you my personal reflections from having, you know, witnessed it and, you know, it's representation in the media. but I do think it's problematic. I wouldn't trade our system for their system any day. And I think that when you get into criminal justice participants, criminal justice system participants, worrying about whether what the implications of their decisions will be vis-a-vis a popular vote, that to me is a corrupting influence. You know, because you're supposed to be deciding decisions according to the law and according to your own sense of what is just in all the circumstances and your ethical

the ethical canons that sort of govern our practice, you're not supposed to be having your decisions influenced by what will ultimately be a popularity contest at the end of the day. And there's just no question that whether it's sort of on purpose or sort of indirect, that concern about what is the, what is my voting base going to think of this decision to to acquit this guy like that's that's corrupting it's corrupting it's going to be corrupting of the question of whether or not you're being intellectually honest about how you deal with a given case as a judge or how you deal with a given case um as a prosecutor the decisions you make and so i think that's highly problematic i've always thought that conceptually that's wrong i mean we have

the public has an opportunity to vote on members of parliament and members of the legislate of the legislatures that that pass these laws that are being followed they have an opportunity to engage in the criminal justice system in that way. They have an opportunity to as members of the public to engage in the criminal justice system as members of juries. The people they vote for that end up being MPs, they get to decide appointments for who the judges will be. And then, you know, you hope that you voted in a politician that is picking a judge for the right reasons. But to have the judges then answer directly to the populace by way of some sort of a vote or the prosecutors, I think that's for the reasons I mentioned highly, highly problematic. Yeah, I don't. think that people do a good enough job of kind of laying out both sides of that discussion, because I do think that it's an important discussion. I absolutely agree that I think it's a corrupting element. I think the counter argument is often that if judges were elected, they would take more action, they would be harsher on sentencing. But our whole system isn't really set up for that because sentencing is guided by previous case law. It's also guided by

the Supreme Court of Canada. They let out a bunch of guidelines that they're looking for. And so it's important to understand that there's way more going on because I have seen signs for elected judges. And that is really concerning because it's going in the wrong direction of someone making an educated decision based on the evidence, the information. When you start looking around it, other people's opinions of it, it becomes more of a witch trial. I agree. And I think the other way that the way that we have seen more activity in our country in terms of this dynamic is you see the legislation. You see Parliament passing more and more mandatory minimum sentences. So when I say mandatory minimum sentence, for those that are watching or listening that aren't lawyers, I'm talking about putting into the code sort of for certain offenses that, you know,

the judge does not have the discretion, will not have a discretion in a given case to give a sentence lower than this many years of jail. And ultimately, that's problematic as well. because, you know, you're fettering the discretion or interfering with the discretion of a judge who is the person that's sitting in a courtroom, listening to what the prosecutor has to say, listening to what the defense counsel has to say, considering all the circumstances, you know, you're fettering the ability of that, that judge to come to their own decision about what's fair in all the circumstances. To me, a judge should have that unfettered discretion. They should be able to say, I'm not someone who's reading a newspaper article. I'm not someone who's sitting in Ottawa, you know, far, far away from this. I'm the one looking the accused person in the eye. I'm listening to the impact statements of the victims. You know, I'm listening to the case law.

I'm looking at the facts of this case. We, you know, I have been appointed by duly elected members of parliament to do this job to the best of my ability. And in doing that, they looked at my credentials. That judge is the best person to decide what the appropriate punishment is in light of what the sentencing principles are in our criminal code, they're in the best position to come to a conclusion of what is right and what's wrong. You know, this sort of boogeyman concept of liberal judges that are for some reason, you know,

overly left-wing and seeking to undermine the criminal justice system. It's not real. You know, what's real is that these, you know, judges are different. They have different personal philosophies, I think, and different. different interpretations of what's appropriate in a given situation, but I don't know of any judge, whether it be the most, I don't know of any judge that's sort of deliberately trying to undermine the criminal justice system. They're all trying to do their best to come to the right conclusion with all of the appropriate principles under consideration. So to me, I think

it's been a, it's been a disappointment that this government, this liberal government has not acted in the way that they suggested they would in undoing some of those mandatory minimum sentences because ultimately lead to situations where, you know, in many situations, most situations, in fact, the mandatory minimum sentence is probably going to be an appropriate sentence for an offender, but there's always exceptions to that. And in those exceptions, that's where you see the injustice and that's where you see constitutional challenges, where lawyers are spending time in courtrooms challenging the viability of these mandatory minimum sentences and who pays for it? Well, the public does. The public ends up paying for all the time and resources that

government lawyers have to spend defending these mandatory minimums. So it's a bit of a rant. I think it's an illogical extension of our conversation about elected criminal justice system participants. Absolutely. And understanding that nuance is there because if anyone listening thinks that you are going to get a more educated answer from Ottawa than from your community member who lives right down the block from you who is acting as a judge, you're not realizing that they are reading all of the evidence. They're looking at case law. They're trying to be involved and they're trying to make an educated decision and the person in Ottawa has no idea of this specific case and this specific circumstance. Yeah, I agree. So I think that's important for people

to understand and help walk them through what it is because one of the problems with having media explain what's going on in the courtroom is there isn't this nuance of why men mandatory minimums don't work and what the actual experience on the ground really looks like. Right. Because we're not going through it in detail enough. We're not talking about the background of who's involved. What are the players? What are their mindsets when they're doing it?

When you read Crown Counsel, this person in the newspaper, it doesn't say their background or how hard they've worked to try and get just resolutions. So moving forward from that, I think that it would be a useful exercise for us to kind of go through what it is like as a lawyer at a firm. because you are a partner and for those of you who don't know when you're in law school, being a partner is the dream and so you've made it. So please tell us what that's like.

Thank you for sort of characterizing it so positively. You know, I think a partner means a lot of different things depending on the context within you, which you work. You know, making partner at sort of a big corporate commercial firm. Please give a shout out to what it's called. Pender litigation. Yes, Pender litigation is my... is our law firm, which is a small law firm.

But being a partner at a large international firm is a different thing than what I do, which is a partner at being a partner at a small firm that we started ourselves in downtown Vancouver, what you'd call a boutique firm. And we do, like we've talked a lot about criminal law today, and that's a lot of what I do, but we also do regulatory law, administrative law, the prosecution work we do, and different things that are sort of adjacent to criminal law as well as a lot of what we do, workplace death investigations and things like that as well in terms of what it's like to be a partner what i what i'll say about what it's like to be a member of the private bar is

it's it's a little bit like having two jobs when you run your own firm and when i say run my own firm i'm running that firm with my three other partners who are all excellent lawyers there's Jonathan DeBara, Scott Wright, and Claire Hatcher. And we've got a number of associates that work with us, too, and an excellent, excellent, excellent office manager named Brittany Andrews, who we rely on heavily and who's the real boss of Pender litigation. But being a partner at a boutique law firm can be draining in the sense that we've got two jobs. We've got the job of conducting our client's cases to the highest level we possibly can

to get the best results and focusing on how do I, how do I get a win for this client in the context of what's available for this client in a given matter? How do I do what's required for them? How do I give them the best possible result? That's, that's one job. And the other job is running the business of that firm. Like, do we have enough money coming in to make sure that everybody's paid adequately, you know, making decisions around payroll, making decisions around resources, making decisions around the office space, making sure the bills, the bill are paid making sure that personnel issues are are sorted out like everything that you would do in a in most businesses um that aren't retail you know you've got it so it's it's those two different

jobs and it both of those jobs could be your full-time job and so you know i'm not i love my job and i love being in the position i'm in a vis-a-vr firm and and and my practice and everything but it does you do have days when you feel drained and you feel like i'm I just cannot possible, there aren't enough hours in the day to possibly serve both of those masters. And that's, and that's difficult. And I think that's one advantage of being in the crown is that you really do, in terms of working for a large government organization is you're not, you're not concerning yourself

with running the business of the crown to the extent that's a business, or budgets or things like that. If you're a prosecutor, you get to sort of sink your teeth into the cases you're litigating. and only that, and I think we're often envious of that on the defense bar side of things. But in saying that, I don't mean to suggest for a second that the Crown's job is easier than the job that we do. It's just one element that is different between the two. Absolutely. Because that is one thing that they do not teach courses on in university is how to run a business, how to market yourself, how to put your best foot forward

when trying to gain new business, and how to grow efficiently. rather than opening the doors and hoping for the best. Can you talk a little bit about what that's like? Because I know that a lot of people are looking at growing businesses and trying to work hard. What is that like in your circumstance? That's a big question. It's one that we engage with as a partnership all the time. What is the best way to run this business to attract the clients that we want to be working for,

attract the type of work that we want to do, and make sure that we have enough work that's ultimately profitable enough to make this. the enterprise of this firm financially worthwhile. And there's many, many different ways in the criminal defense bar that you can go about doing that. I mean, some people, you know, their focus is conventional modern advertising in the sense that they're going to engage with search engines and what they call search engine optimization SEO to make sure that they're, you know, when somebody goes to Google and looks up, you know, a particular type of legal problem that their name is going to pop up near the top of list of lawyers. Like, that's a, that's an issue. And then there's some people that, and I think this

has been to this point, what our firm has done the most is just try to focus on doing really good work and hoping that your reputation within the legal community will speak for itself. I'm not, I don't mean to say that the one is better than the other. I think you need, actually at this point in time, you need to do a little bit, at least a little bit of both, or at least a little bit of conventional advertising in addition to, you know, making sure that your, your reputation is pristine as you can possibly make it so that other lawyers who encounter a legal problem that's perhaps out of their bailiwick but within yours are eager to refer work to you. So, sorry, my answer is sort of all over the place, but, you know, it's a really dynamic question as to how

people approach a dynamic question. It's a really, it's an interesting question with a lot of different answers depending on who you're talking to in terms of the best way to advertise yourself. You know, some people are more willing to be self-promotional on social media and things like that. And some people just want to go through sort of more conventional channels. And some people just sort of completely rely on referrals from other lawyers. There's all sorts of different ways you can go about it. The work we do, especially to the extent that we're defending people accused of crime, it doesn't lend itself to a lot of, to every, you know, advertising type situation.

There's a lot of this, you know, they don't want, you know, a criminal lawyer. sort of sponsoring their enterprise. And that's, you know, that's just a limitation. It's just it's a, it's an interesting aspect to what we do. But, you know, and also it's when people need us, they need such a unique skill set that it's questionable as to whether or not if you put, you know, a big ad in the newspaper for a criminal offense firm, is that going to lead to that many more more customers? It's really about sort of when people turn to the internet or ask a friend or ask their friend that's not a criminal lawyer, you know, this has happened to, to me, to my brother, to my son, to my daughter. How do you put yourself in a position to be the recommended

person to go to? And there's all sorts of ways to go about that. Yeah, I imagine that that's really difficult just in terms of you can't exactly just put your ad on the front of a newspaper or anything like that because the information isn't going to be read by people who might be in that circumstance. And so it's constantly re-having that conversation of how do we get ourselves out there? What areas are we interested in pushing and stuff? So that's really interesting. What about the other parts of you've done criminal and you said that there are other aspects of your firm? Right. What are those and what can people start to understand about those different areas of law?

Because I think we do have a pretty good understanding of criminal law, hopefully, in terms of the basics. But what are some of the other areas that people, administration and administrative law is very intimidating just in the word. Right. Well, I mean, I do a lot of work that's regulatory or involves sort of professional. professional discipline. And I'll act from time to time for, you know, for example, lawyers that have allegedly, you know, engaged in misconduct that's not criminal, but is beyond the scope of what's permissible, you know, in terms of the rules and regulations of the proper conduct of a law practice. So I will represent them, represent lawyers that face, put them, are sort of

facing that situation. And they could be facing a consequence that could be complete disbarment and losing their livelihood or something less than that, some sort of fine, some sort of suspension from the practice of law, a temporary one. I do the same thing with respect to police officers from time to time, so police officers that aren't necessarily charged with criminal offenses themselves, but police officers that have gotten themselves in a situation where they're alleged to have misconducted themselves around the ethics, around the police act, around sort of what's expected of them and are facing a professional discipline type situation. They could end up with a demotion as a result. They could end up losing their jobs. And so that's high-stakes

work in the discipline field. I also do work for athletes who have disputes within their organizations. It's called the Sport Dispute Resolution Council of Canada. And so athletes that have experienced either have been victims of, I've acted for victims, and I've also acted for alleged perpetrators of bullying or harassment, whether they be coaches or players in the like, you know, sort of the national athletic realm. And that's really interesting work too. You get to engage with an interesting type of client and sort of help them. So most of the work I do involves an allegation that somebody has breached a law of some kind, a regulation and sort of defending them in that situation or prosecuting them in that situation. It's just not

always the criminal code. That's so interesting. The sports one is an interesting one just because it isn't one I think anyone ever thinks of. How often does that arise and how often, where does it usually go? Well, the Sports Dispute Resolution Council of Canada has their own process for essentially, it's essentially a tribunal that, you know, so that these matters can be dealt with with a hearing sort of outside of a courtroom, but with a decision maker that's qualified to make these decisions. So it's like a trial, but, you know, the arbitrators and decision makers and adjudicators are people that usually come from the sports law or sports background. And they usually, what they result is, is a ruling that will have implications for an athlete or a coach as to whether or not there's a

finding that they actually did do something wrong, number one, and number two, if they did, what their punishment will be vis-a-vis their ability to continue within that sport. So they may be suspended from an international event, they may be in a situation where they take responsibility if that's appropriate in the circumstances and they get some help if there's some issue related to misbehavior that has to do with sort of a mental health issue and things like that. But it's really sort of a court, you know, for the layperson, it's like a court type process that happens outside of a courtroom. Okay. That is really interesting. But the other thing I was going to ask is, could you tell us a bit about your partners and what it's like to work with them?

So we can have a better understand. Yeah, sure. So we were, Panner litigation flowed from the firm that we worked for before that some of us did called Sutherland Jete. And Sutherland Jete were two criminal lawyers that are now both judges. And we took the firm over from them. Scott Wright, Jonathan Debra, and myself all worked at Sutherland Jete. And we were lucky that a good friend of ours, Claire Hatcher, who had worked at another firm, was prepared to join us after those, after Judge Jete left. And we decided to rebrand the firm because we wanted to be known as a firm that does more than conventional criminal law, but we do regulatory work and that we do administrative work and some civil litigation as well. You know, it's criminally adjacent. Scott is one of my oldest friends. I've known him since we were both in the seventh grade. He's a fantastic lawyer and a fantastic friend. And it's been, you know, one of the great, it's been one of the great pleasures of my life to get a chance to work with somebody that I'm that close with. So that's been a fantastic thing. Jonathan,

and Claire, I met only when I started practicing law, but they're both just great people, great individuals, really great lawyers and people that, all of them are people that I've learned so much from. And all of us practiced with, had the good fortune to practice with experienced lawyers that really knew what they were doing. I had been around a long time and learned a lot from them early in our career. But now I think we all share the belief that we feel really fortunate to practice with a group of like-minded peers. And we're all, I would say quite approachable and collaborative in the sense that if you're working on a case that has nothing to do with one of your other partners, you want to walk down the hallway and

knock on the door and have a conversation with them and talk through an issue that you're trying to figure out on your trial. There's a collective, I think, philosophy that part of the pleasure of practicing law together is, as a group of friends, is that not only is it an obligation to help your fellow partners and your fellow associates to work through these problems, but that it's fun to do so. It's part of the joy of practicing law is to work through problems in a collaborative way with colleagues. And Scott, Jonathan, and Claire are all fantastic in that regard. And I never feel like I'm, I don't think any of us ever feel that we're imposing on one another when we're helping each other out. And that's why I think we have such a

great dynamic at our firm of, a dynamic that I'm really proud of. Awesome, because that certainly isn't the case with all small businesses where you can communicate with someone and try and approach things differently. Because if you think about if you're running a small business, it's you who's the owner and then your staff. You're not discussing how do we make more money, how do we approach this differently, how do we change up our approach, how do we change our logo to be more approachable, those types of conversations and being able to just discuss issues of the day or cases. That's something that's very unique to you and your team and lawyers in general where you

can go back and forth and you're in an adversarial world where somebody can say, hey, I actually don't agree with what you're saying and let's approach it from this way. So is there any advice you could always? to people who might not be in law but are running small businesses and say this is kind of the rubric in which we approach things and this is some of the benefits we yield when we do all get into a room and disagree or this is what it's like to because I think that's the point of a chamber of commerce but not one of the things it's actually used for is to disagree and to try and come up with better ideas to run a business. Right. You know, I think I can only think

of sort of broad advice to give because I think that what's appropriate in the circumstances It's so specific to the context, but I would say that if you're collaborating with a group with a group of people and running a business together, you just, you should never underestimate the value, even if it's a situation where you feel your, you know, extreme confidence that your view of how things should happen is the right one, never underestimate the value of hearing out your partners and your collaborators with respect to the way they think it should be done. because there's a value in second-guessing your own opinions, no matter in your own views, even if they're strong and you're going to learn more by listening to other people's views. And there's also an inherent view in respecting the opportunity of others to express how they feel about things. Even if you're ultimately going to not take their advice or overrule them or sort of outvote

or disagree with them, people deserve to be heard. And people deserve, if you're going to go to, go to the mat with a group of people that you're sharing a business with, you have to hear them out. You have to pay them the respect of the very least, that you hear their views, that you are trying to understand their views, and that if you disagree with them, it's from a place of principle and for certain reasons. It's not just, well, I want to do it my way, and I think my views are more important than you. Even if you don't look at it that way, you've got to give people the opportunity to participate intellectually and fully in whatever enterprise you're

all engaged in or else there's going to be resentment. And resentment is going to lead to problems in your business. Fair enough. One thing that I've run across more and more and something I've been trying to hold myself true to is doing a better job at steel manning other people's positions who might not be articulating it in the way that people in law school communicate their ideas because that is where you start to see a distance between lawyers and people who haven't gone to law school is we start to learn about principled arguments, having the best argument saying it short and succinct and having a really good point. And then you run into somebody in the street and there are arguments all over the place and you can feel that in that they're

saying a bunch of different things and none of it's really lining up properly. How often do you run into that in terms of talking to a client and knowing they maybe have a eighth grade education and you have a law degree, so there is a communications disconnect. And you can see way more where they're trying to make their points and having to make that succinct and proper. What is that like? The job of a lawyer, ultimately, I think, is in many respects, you know, is to be a strong communicator. And strong communication, what is strong communication is totally contextual. You know, strong communication in any given situation is dependent on who is the audience, right? And so, you know, you're very right. If I've got somebody in my office that has got a legal problem,

they're concerned about the legal problem from the perspective of its implications to them, right? So for me to talk to them about, to just start going through case law with somebody that's never read a case before, doesn't really understand how jurisprudence works, it's not addressing the problem they have. It's not helping them to understand what they're facing and what their options are. So you have to be able to talk to people. I wouldn't really say, Aaron, it's about intelligence. It's about what is the language that people speak? Like the person comes into my office, they're hiring a lawyer because they need a lawyer because they don't speak in legal jargon and they don't read cases. They've come to someone, just like they come to a plumber to fix, because they

don't deal with their own plumbing. They've come to a lawyer to say, okay, you know, this piece of information, this paper I've got from a police officer says I'm charged with these offenses. I don't know what they mean. And here's what the police officer says I did. I didn't do that. Like, how does this all translate into a result for me. Like, am I going to be found guilty? Am I going to get punished? What does that punishment look like? You've got to be able to take that all apart in a plain spoken way so that a person who does not have legal expertise can make the critical decisions they have to make to decide how to navigate the situation and how it's going to impact their life and what their life is going to look like vis-a-vis this legal problem. So, you know, you have to go

into any meaning. You know, you have to practice law as a human being first with an understanding and an ability to translate legalese, legal jargon, legal terminology to the human experience of everyday life. Yeah, that's true. And that's so important. One area that I recently applied for a bunch of summer positions, and obviously that didn't work because of COVID, so many big changes. But one issue that I had that I just thought I'd get your thoughts on, because I do have some listeners who are going to law school as well, is based on my experience, applying to law firms, one of the issues I had was that it almost removes the whole person from the application process. You write a cover letter, but half of the cover letter is pre-written

in a way where everyone says the exact same thing. I am a student at Peter Allard's school at the university. Like some of it, so much of the page is already pre-written. How would you recommend young people today who are looking for positions where we do start to see a lot of cover letters even outside of law school that are becoming so professionally written that there's almost no person left. How would we go about addressing that? Well, it goes back to what we were talking about and what I was saying about communication. You've got to try to get a sense of your audience and what they're looking for. So I would say, you know, I understand that like to a certain extent letters have to be pro forma in some way because, you know, it's, it's incredibly

time-consuming to write a bunch of cover letters that are all individually tailored. And there's a lot of things that you have to say about yourself that you're going to say differently for everyone. But sorry, sorry, say the same way to everyone that you approach. But to me, I think it's a really valuable, it's really valuable if you can to have read up upon the firm or a lawyer that you're applying for a job at and to sort of if you can do it in a way that's natural, you know, try to sort of explain your interest in working at the firm and relate it to the work that you know they've done. Maybe it's a case that you've read or maybe it's just something you've read off the firm's website or something that you've gathered from talking

to other people about that firm. But sort of tailoring your application to an interest in the firm and an interest in the particular work they do, that's helpful. And I would say, you know, I can only, I can't speak for, for everybody that's interviewing law students, but I say to the extent that, you know, in the, in the criminal law realm, to the extent that you can highlight practical experience that you have, like experience that you have outside of your grades and the typical courses, but practical experience that you have in dealing with people or dealing with conflict, really highlight that, really highlight the skills you have beyond just like I did, I did well in law school. And that maybe that you competed in moots or that you had a different career growing up, like a social worker or something that involved public speaking that's going to signal to the firm you're applying at that you've got a set of skills that translates well to litigation, which involves dealing with people, dealing with conflict, dealing with difficult situations. Yeah, I mean, it's speaking to a jury and everything, yeah. Yeah, it's a tough go to crack. Okay. Well, the other thing I was going to mention is if you go on to your website and you look at your bio, It is incredibly daunting because you have done a lot.

You have participated in a lot of amazing things, and I'm hoping you can... That's what you're involved in the law society. You're involved in advocacy. You're doing a lot, and I think that that's reflected in your bio, which is great. I'm hoping you can tell us a bit about the other aspects you're involved in. Sure. I'm often teased by my colleagues about the number of committees that I choose to sit on, But, you know, I'm interested in the legal profession and sort of the high-level issues that affect the way we practice law and the way we serve the public.

And so I've always had, I've always put an emphasis in my career on being involved in sort of pro bono extracurricular committee type work. And it would take me a long time to go through all those committees. But, you know, there's a couple organizations that I really, I've been lucky to be involved in one of them is the Canadian Bar. and in particular the criminal, the national criminal justice section, because that is an organization that is heavily involved in law reform and making submissions to parliament about problems and issues we see with the laws that they're being passed. And we usually have representatives that either testify before parliamentary committee or assist in drafting written responses to the legislation that's being passed. The group is a really interesting group to be a part of because it's drawn from lawyers all over the country and it's prosecutors and defense lawyers. So we have a balanced approach to law reform and look at it from a fairness and practical and efficiency point of view as opposed to sort of a law and order sort of bent or a social justice bent. It's a fairness bent and it's a fairly balanced and sort of centrist approach to criminal law.

Like, I've loved the work that I've done with that particular committee, and I'm, I'm their communications officer starting in September, so I'm looking forward to that. Congratulations. Thanks. And, you know, I've done, you know, the work that I really love that's extracurricular, you know, there's a bunch of other committees that I've been a part of that I continue to be a part of, like, the trial lawyers association of BC. I'm the head of the criminal defense committee for them, and I've done other, been involved in other groups as well. but I really, really have enjoyed the opportunities I've had to instruct and present to law students and other lawyers, junior lawyers, and members of the public just sort of in terms of, you know, educational efforts, in terms of the practice of criminal law, and in particular, trial advocacy skill work. And when I say trial advocacy skill work, I'm talking about the mechanics of good advocacy, of the public speech. and witness examination that happens in the realm of a trial or an appeal, how to do that better.

I mean, it's, you know, we broke it down earlier and, like, you run a business, you run the business of law, and then you practice law. But if you want to go into the practice of law aspect of it and break that down further, there's a need on the one hand, and what you principally learn in law school is, like, what are the sources of the law, you know, what does the criminal code say? what of the cases said, what are the principles that sort of organize the criminal law in this country. But then in addition to that, there's an aspect to legal practice, which is how do I communicate effectively in a courtroom? How do I cross-examine a witness? How do I perform a

direct examination of a witness? How do I give an effective closing argument? How do I give an effective opening statement? All those things are difficult, and young lawyers, you know, it's a tough profession. It's an apprenticeship-based profession. So you learn by doing it. And inevitably, you learn by doing it poorly at first. At least that's been my experience. And you get better with time. And it's an incredibly intimidating thing to have to be doing the best job you possibly can for your client as a new lawyer and also learning at the same time how to do it well. And so I've been part of a number of different skills. development programs that sort of are designed to have not just conferences but situations where young lawyers or law students come in and perform a mock trial or elements of a mock trial and we give them feedback we film them we sit down and we watch the tape with them and we give them feedback the CLEBC has an incredible program that's been run for some time there's a program a really expansive incredible program out of Osgood hall in Ontario that I've been a

skills instructor at a couple times in the same way. And I've been really, really lucky to be a part of the Ellen McKeckern course in Advanced Trial Advocacy at the UBC Allard School of Law. The thing I love about, you know, I love giving back in that way because I remember what it was like to be sort of completely in the dark as to what how you're supposed to, you know, even start preparing for giving across, for conducting a cross-examination, let alone actually conducting. it. But, you know, and this might be just the way that I am. But I find that by forcing myself into situations where I teach it, it reinforces things for me. I learn things and I'm often instructing alongside other lawyers that are fantastic experience lawyers. And I learn things from watching them teach

as well. So I've just always enjoyed that aspect of the work. And so instructing on trial advocacy and helping law students or junior lawyers to be better at what they do, it's just, I get a real rush out of that. Well, and that makes sense just thinking about if you go into a courtroom and you had to be the person to start communicating, you're literally being judged by a judge. Like that is the circumstance in which you're in. You have a jury watching you in some cases, but you also have your client hoping that you're going to make a good argument. And if I'm being honest, I have sat in a lot of courtrooms and I've seen some lawyers make not so great arguments. And so you kind of see how crucial that can be and how vulnerable the person said.

sitting there is because they might not understand whether or not that was a good argument or a bad argument and what the cornerstones are, you were also a sessional instructor for one semester at the University of the Fraser Valley. Can you tell us a bit about what brought you there and what the mindset of trying to be involved in explaining law to people is? Yeah, I taught us, I've done one semester as a sessional at UFV, University of the Fraser Valley an intro to criminal law as a criminology course, and I found it, I loved it, incredibly time-consuming as it should be. Interesting to come at it from the background of a legal.

I'm teaching, you know, the curriculum I look at it through the lens of a criminal lawyer, and I'm teaching it to a group of first or second year students who are taking a criminology class and need to understand the same concepts, but necessarily at a less specific, less detailed level. You know, I really love, I love that classroom environment. I love doing it. You know, my criminal practice has made it too difficult for me to continue doing it every semester just because, you know, I practice in downtown Vancouver and the course was at night,

and I'm often in trial and preparing. So I just found that I wasn't going to have enough time to continue doing it. But I love the discourse in the classroom. I love taking it outside of the work I do, which is usually, you know, in a given case, applying the law to a particular fact pattern. And in the classroom, I'm opening it up to sort of more philosophical questions about whether or not a particular, you know, legal defense or mode of charter application is, you know, philosophically, how does it fit in?

Is it, does it make sense to people? Does it make sense to these young students who are new to their sort of post-secondary academic life. How does it, how does the concept of duress or of self-defense, how does that bounce off them? Where do they, where does it, how does that show up for them as, as a concept that's, um, that can come alive for them? So it's, it's, it's, I love teaching and I hope to do more of it. That's awesome. One of the experiences I've had more recently and I'm going to tread as carefully as I can, I know a few police officers who are amazing individuals who attended the University of the Fraser Valley. There's a lot of talk of police officers right now.

But one of the things that one of them had told me is that they do not receive really any solid education other than their undergrad in criminology in criminal law and how stop and search is work, how to manage themselves not just by what the criminal code gives them the authority to act on. But how to do that based on with a case law also gives them guidance on. And so that seems to be a gap for me where the individual I know is interested in going to law school to try and educate himself on those foundational components of case law. I'm wondering if there's anything that an individual can do who is a police officer who would like to educate themselves more on criminal law side of things, how to write a proper warrant. If you have any

thoughts or ideas on how that person would proceed because RCMP, Abbotsford Police, they're all trying to figure out a way to do better. And so this is a great opportunity for you to share some of your knowledge. Well, I've been lucky to be part of training initiatives with police departments before and something that I always, you know, I'm always feeling honored to be, to be asked to do those things. And I've been involved in the search warrant course for the RCMP out here in Chilawak and done some other things. I mean, I think that in terms of your colleague, the fact that they are, you know, interested in bettering their knowledge in that regard. I mean, I think they need to sort of continue to push their superiors to say this.

There's an unmet need here, and how do I, how do I learn more? What courses can I attend? What courses are available? What courses, what informal training opportunities can you make available to us? Because we see a gap here or there. It's, you know, it's difficult. I think that police officers have busy, it's a really difficult job, and it's a busy job, and it's tough for them.

to sort of go and try to learn, go to take a university course on the side when they're in the thick of a four day on, four day off schedule. But, you know, they should take the opportunity. I'll say this. It's not, it's important that every police officer know and understand that when they're involved in a prosecution, I'm going to be a witness, that the crown is not their lawyer. And I think they understand that. The crown is going to call them as a witness and is going to be supportive of them if it's appropriate to do so. But they're not their lawyer. But that doesn't mean it's not appropriate for, police officers to, whether it be informally or in the context of the case, to seek out their colleagues at the Crown and ask legal questions and try to improve their knowledge that way by having a positive working relationship with Crown Counsel. Because I think you'll find that most Crown Council that I know, and I don't, I'm not qualified to speak for the Crown, but I think it's been my experience and my observation that most Crown Counsel are happy to sort of not give legal advice, but, you know, give them a sense of what, assist them in understanding what the law means and how the law should be, you know, that helped them through the conflict of how to navigate the law in a given difficult dynamic situation, like a roadside stop, for example. Awesome. Well, we can, I think we treaded carefully on that conversation. The other one that I was going to ask is that you did run for Bencher, and I didn't understand what that was. I did see your name for it, and then I did do some research, but could you share a little bit about what a Brent Bencher is?

Sure, benchers are like the, are a position that are, they're elected from among the, um, the population of lawyers in a given region. So there's benchers in every region in British Columbia. And they are essentially, um, stewards of, of, of, you know, to ensure that the public is properly served by the legal profession. So they make, are there to be available to give confidential advice to lawyers who are concerned. that they have fallen a foul of ethical requirements, but they're also there to be decision makers around policy that the law society follows, and also with respect to individual cases where discipline might be necessary. So it's a huge responsibility. It's, I think it's a really, it's hard to overstate how important they are to the legal profession and to the relationship, of, most importantly, the relationship of the public to the legal profession. I was unsuccessful by a very small margin in that election. Cheryl DeSaw, who's an outstanding person and an outstanding lawyer,

and if he was already doing a great job as a venture, won that election, and I couldn't have lost to a more qualified person. So I'm very happy that the public is being served by Cheryl right now in that role. And I wish her the best in that. But it's always been my view that it's a, you know, one of the most high-minded thing you can do as a lawyer is serve the public and serve the community of lawyers by being a venture and giving back. It's not a paid position. It's a position you do out of a feeling of responsibility and it's a labor of love. It's a lot of work and a lot of energy.

But it's something that I plan to pursue again. Having come as close as I did, I'd like to give it another shot, whether it could be something I do fairly soon when another eye. opportunity to run comes up and it could be something that I wait on. I'm going to make that decision over the course of the summer. Well, I do think that you would have been, after reviewing all of your biography, I do think that that aligns perfectly even through this podcast. I think that it shows how much you care, how much you're willing to give back. You've operated as a sessional instructor. You've tried to share knowledge with up-and-coming lawyers. You've started your own business. You have a lot of experience. You've have a lot of education. And I think that that does speak to the

need for the most qualified person and I do think that you should run again because through this it's important for people to understand that role models are constantly pursuing new adventures, new goals and that's important to encourage and to say we've seen you do all of these amazing things for the community and you're continuing to try and climb. You're able to balance both sides of the position as crown and as defense and you recognize the limitations within both. I think that that is a person who should look towards being a bigger voice for the community. And it's similar to my previous episode where you do get to have your face more shown than most. And I do think that you have a better platform to communicate with people

and share your kind of understanding of what's going on in the legal profession. And I think that's an important side, just as much as real estate, for people to understand because we do get a bad understanding of lawyers and realtors and sharing that. So what are some things that you would want the lay person to know about the legal profession currently. What do I want to legal? There's a lot. I mean, I think that there's coming from the position I come from having spent a lot of time in the criminal realm, I think the thing that I'd like people to know is that despite, you know, what you see in the paper about criminal, you know, matters and involve and engage criminal law, that I'd like people to understand how important our legal aid system is and how important. that our legal aid system continue to be funded and to be funded in step with how inflation

has incurred. Sorry, has occurred. You know, we've recently had sort of an increase in legal aid rates thanks in a large part to an organization called All, the Association of Legal Aid Lawyers and their successful negotiations with our Attorney General. It's still not, those rates are still not enough. And I think the legal aid bar is still underfunded. But I want the public to understand that they are they are saving money and creating efficiencies in the criminal justice system by properly paying legal aid lawyers. I'm not saying enough that legal aid lawyers should be getting rich and they're not, they're not even close. But legal aid lawyers need to be paid a rate that's that, you know, taking into account the fact that they're, you know, running their

own businesses and sometimes have offices and associates and staff to pay. There has to be enough so that they can do their job without cutting corners. And so that people, people are dealt with fairly and efficiently their clients. Because when legal aid is improperly funded, what you end up with is less and less people doing legal aid work and more and more people self-represented. And self-represented people left to deal with the vagaries of the criminal justice system. Forget about fairness. I mean, it's completely unfair for them to be in that position because they're indigent, usually for reasons that aren't their fault. But also, they're stuck navigating a complicated legal world without the assistance.

of a lawyer and that slows down and bogs down our courts and ends up, it causes a situation where judges and prosecutors have to spend more time dealing with legal issues. And that's to the detriment of everyone because less matters get, less matters get quickly resolved that otherwise should. And people end up waiting in what ends up being a longer line to have their cases hurt. And delay happens. And then people end up getting charges against them drop because of delay concerns. So it really all starts with legal aid for me, that if you pay a proper wage, just like any other individual might expect if they're working sort of at arm's length from the government, you know, huge efficiencies, huge efficiencies are going to happen. People are going to get the

advice they need to properly navigate the criminal justice system. Prosecutors are going to be able to do their job better and more efficiently if they've got a competent defense lawyer on the other side to work with. And the whole system is fair. And the narrative that you see is a concern that people, you know, that the public doesn't respect the legal aid system because they've believe, oh, this is just money going to criminals to get off. But that's not what it is. You know, an educated, enlightened approach to all this, you know, reveals that the legal aid system is meant to enhance fairness and efficiency. It's not there just to simply, for no good reason, help people get away with things. It's there to help to enhance fairness and efficiency. And everybody in society

benefits from that. So that would be the number one thing that I'd want to sort of, legal issue that I'd want to sort of convey to the layperson. And I would also, it's been my experience, you know, at being a lawyer, I'm very proud to be a part of the legal profession. Despite, you know, the bad lawyer jokes and the, you know, what you see out there in the media about lawyers and there's bad examples, particularly for the United States, certain lawyers that were, are surrounding their president right now and their behavior, it's been my experience that lawyers, most lawyers that I know, I mean, there's exceptions in every profession, but most lawyers I know are very high-minded. good people, decent people, trying to do their best, trying to do the best for their clients,

trying to do it in an ethical and respectful way, and trying to do it in a way that they're doing those jobs because they believe they're making society a better place, just as I do. And I think that's, I don't think I'm unique in feeling that way. I think my colleague, like the vast majority of my colleagues, whether they be defense lawyers, prosecutors, or lawyers from all sorts of different areas. They are, they're not driven by, for the most part, they're not driven by greed. They're not driven by ego. They're driven by a desire to do their best and to do the right thing and to make the world a better place. And I think, I wish that the public, I wish that view was expressed to the public more and I couldn't, I can't, I couldn't express it anymore. I just think

it's incredibly important that people understand that. I absolutely agree. While I was a native of court worker working with lawyers, it was way more like working with someone from social services because that legal aid lawyer, they're not just focused on trying to get the person off of a charge. They're the person calling treatment centers or trying to connect them with AA and trying to get the root of the problem addressed. And we don't recognize that when we're talking about lawyers. We don't really have that conversation.

So I think that's valuable. The up-incoming lawyers know that that is part of the job. Yeah. And also that legal aid is crucial to making sure that those people are. are there to make sure that struggling people get resources. And that is part of what lawyers do, whether or not that's the mindset that you go into law school with, of like,

I'm going to be helping people get into treatment centers. That's probably not what you're thinking about. But that ends up being a part of the role. It's a part of it. Trying to help find them housing, resources, all of those things are so important. And I agree that criminal lawyers go underrecognized for the role they play there. And when you read that somebody's been released or any of those,

It doesn't often say, and they went to a treatment center, and they're getting the help they need with qualified professionals. And so I think it's important to share that because I do think that there is a lot of stigma when you are a lawyer. There's such a divide between the conversations people have. If you're interacting with a lawyer, you usually intimidated by them. And so it's easy to get into that mindset of wanting to put that person down because maybe you're insecure about yourself. And that's one of the realities I've seen just talking about law school and trying to make it more. Just another step. Like when people go to med school, we don't look at them as different than us.

We look at them, that's an accomplishment. That's awesome. But law school kind of gets a different type of rap, I would say. Yeah, and I think, I mean, there's all sorts of reasons for that. And some of it is how you described and some of it is that there have been, you know, some notable examples of bad lawyer behavior and, you know, some that comes with the territory. And if you're out there to just sort of, you know, be given a key to the city as being the most popular and nicest person that makes everybody happy. It's hard to do that as a lawyer.

You know, as we've talked about, it's an adversarial process litigation. So you're usually going to have a someone on the other side that's at worst not happy with you and at best formally disagreeing with your position on things. So it's, I think the conflict that's inherent in our job drives sometimes an unfairly negative view of lawyers, but, you know, it's not a view I I share. Awesome. Well, one of the other parts that's just really interesting about law in general is that we do get an education on how to shorten our thoughts. In my undergrad, I remember writing 12-page papers on nonsense and just trying to make it as long as possible and adding in filler words. And then you get to law school and they completely switch that approach

to you. And it's, you can only write 500 words and you have to make a really good point. So that's an educational tool. But the other educational tool that I don't think people realize is that you're interacting with the strangest of circumstances and the largest anomalies you can imagine where there are all these things that just align so and this is how your case came about. Right. And so I think one of the interesting things to do is to share maybe some of the cases and the ones where something odd occurred that is outside because that's what really I think

educates lawyers is that you do end up learning all about fairies and how they work and how they function and who's involved in that. and most people have no idea so it's constantly learning are there any cases you can share that have that unique component to them where you start to realize that this is kind of part of being a lawyer is being prepared for oddness yeah i mean i think a lot of the the oddest circumstances i've i've encountered or are encapsulated within the uh the protection of solicitoraliant privilege so i can't I can't say much about them, but I've had, I've had strange, you know, there was once a witness I, I was preparing to examine in a murder case. It was not, it was, it was an incidental person in the sense that they were someone that had found or encountered, I'd known the person that was deceased and had been the first to encounter them.

And I found out on the eve of, of this person testifying that he, you know, otherwise I understood him to be a very, just an ordinary person. I don't know, a person that, whatever that means, but someone that had a relatively sort of uncontroversial sort of life and a conventional job and things like that. And then I found out the night before that he had a massive collection of videos on YouTube about having been visited by alien life forms. So for certain reasons, there were aspects of the witnesses' testimony that I had to challenge and deal with in terms.

terms of his credibility. And so there was a lengthy examination about his belief and that he had had regular contact with aliens in the form of sort of floating blue orbs that was really I mean, that's that's one example. And you run into things like that all the time. And I mean, I don't, I don't even bring it up to sort of suggest that he was mentally ill. I mean, he was a person that really believed that and believed that he was having this experience for whatever reason or claimed to believe that and otherwise was living a healthy and regular life.

So maybe that's a bad example. That's a really interesting example. Is there any fields that you've learned about like kind of the fairies that are interesting and kind of outside what people would know you for as criminal law is about somebody stealing bananas from save on foods where it's kind of like, well, this is an odd.

circumstance, just in the sense of how much you had to learn about an odd area. There's all sorts of situations like that that occur. I'm struggling to find good examples. I mean, I defended a major company that was, had designed and was making additions and refurbishments to a major port in British Columbia and had to construct an extension to the port, like the commercial loading and loading docks. and in doing so allegedly had killed a bunch of fish through negligent construction of this particular extension to the port. And so I learned a lot about the proper way to do sort of underwater construction and how you build something called a bund wall and how you avoid or minimize to the greatest extent possible, you know, the killing of fish.

and sea life. This is not that interesting, but that's something that I had to go into a lot of detail. That is pretty interesting just in terms of you don't,

like these are things that people never interact with and when they go to Tawasson or any of those areas, they don't look at the area and go, how is this constructed and was it done in a way

that does act in the best interest of the sea life? For sure. And I do think that environmental law is a hot topic right now. And so those components are interesting and how you can all of a sudden go from being a criminal lawyer

to interacting with sea life is part of the... I learned a lot about that. I mean, you learned a lot, we learned a lot about sea life also. There's a lot, that whole process also involves interacting with an understanding of how birds interact with dead sea life and how that can be a sign that the construction is being done negligently because birds are feasting on the carcasses of dead sea life. I mean, it's just a, it was litigation can be fascinating in that way. It can take you into sort of all sorts of different nooks and crannies of the world that you didn't expect.

It's not always about sort of somebody robbing a liquor store. There's all sorts of different elements to criminal law. I mean, even if you're, you know, in defending even impaired driving cases, which I don't do a lot of, like there's the devices that are used to process someone's blood alcohol level, you know, to understand that law. You have to have an understanding of the efficiencies and the and the mechanics and the relax. liability of those machines, and that's, you know, it's relatively complex technology. So there's more to it than sort of he said this and this other guy said that and what really happened. I think that that's really true because you start to realize that everything you're interacting with is way more complex than you really understand because you start to look at things like using a way of analyzing blood alcohol levels and realizing that it can be done properly or improperly.

For sure. Speed detectors, they can be done well or poorly. Absolutely. And so all of these are elements in which most people never interact with. And then they start to operate as if the world is just clear to them. And I think that that's where a lot of people get themselves into trouble is because the world is so complex. There is relationships with the ecosystem with blood alcohol levels that's so complex that it's nice to be able to have someone on who really understands those areas or starts to educate themselves on those areas to be able to help other people. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a joy to be able to have a job where you are led sort of all over the place intellectually, that you get to look at things from, you know, the law. I mean, the laws can be incredibly complex in a given application or in a given situation, you know, when you're dealing with means of surveillance, means of and the process for getting, being granted an authorization for the police to be able to, you know, have a wiretap running and whatever that means, given the technology of the day and, you know, your ability, you know, the ability of the place and the right

of the place to obtain records that you've posted on Facebook or Instagram and things like that. I mean, the law gets incredibly, incredibly complicated in those areas in what people would otherwise think is a relatively straightforward matter. And then you get into the complications and interesting aspects of the facts, like how does a large ferry work? How does, you know, how do you build a bund wall and a new, you know, an extension on a port? How does blood alcohol sensor work and how accurate is it? And then, you know, forget about that in terms of homicide, you know, looking at and being able to cross-examine and deal with the potential for weaknesses in an expert's position on fingerprint evidence, DNA evidence, impression evidence, all those sorts of things.

I mean, there's a lot to learn and a lot to learn just to be able to effectively test the evidence of those witnesses, let alone sort of have a counter-theory or counter-narrative. How often do you feel like you're learning about new things like that where you're interacting with strange details of all the time? All the time. All the time. Most days. Okay. Where would you like to see yourself moving forward in terms of your career or personal life? Obviously, you're engaged on the personal side, so that's pretty clear. Yeah, I mean, personal life, I feel really blessed and lucky right now to have the family around me that I do. And I want to continue. that family to continue to grow and to hopefully continue to live in Strathcona, where we love to live right now. And I feel lucky to be not wanting for much in that category. Professionally, my aspiration is to continue to grow our firm and be in a position to take on cases that are, you know, they have to be profitable so we can keep the lights on, but they also, you know, my aspiration

is to be able to deal with the most interesting cases that are available. And I like cases that are, I don't mind cases that are lengthy, but cases where a lot's at stake, cases where there's interesting and intellectually challenging issues, that's what I'm interested. And so to the extent that I can continue to grow as a lawyer and improve my skills and be in a position to be versatile and handle whatever interesting unknown case comes down the pike that's big and has lots of moving parts, that's what I want to continue to do. That's awesome. Yeah. What about COVID's impact on your ability to operate? Obviously, the courts were shut down for a significant period of time. Is there any information you can share with us in terms of what's going on with your role and what you're seeing kind of play out?

I know that there are significant concerns about delays and that impacting the ability for some trials to go forward and that person being let off purely because of that. I know the Justice Minister put something forward saying we wouldn't let that happen. We'll legislate if that occurs. But is there anything locally in BC that you can talk about? Yeah, I mean, my impression of that is that I don't think a lot of people personally are going to sort of, walk out the back door because of COVID. I think that our law on, our law as it pertains to sort of your constitutional right to a speedy trial takes into account the fact that sort of unanticipated things such as a pandemic, you know, it's not specifically noted in, in, in the

legislation, but unanticipated sort of what you'd otherwise call sort of an active, unexpected act of God, which this clearly is, our law takes into account that that's out of the control of everybody that's doing their best. And so that's not necessarily on its own going to afford somebody, you know, a constitutional remedy that they were somehow aggrieved. I think that, you know, you're going to do a situation where the crown fails to now make a proper adjustments and do everything they can to get these trials on as quickly as possible, as quickly as reasonably possible, given the technology we have to move, you know, the adjustments we've made and the technology we have to get these cases moving again as quickly as possible. I think you can see some delay arguments

there, but I wouldn't put much stock in what, you know, Mr. Lamedi had to say, I don't know. You know, we're talking about Section 11B of the charter, which is a constitutional. I mean, it's not, you couldn't just legislate out of a constitutional remedy, so I'm not sure what he's really trying to say there. But, you know, what I, what I will say, which I think is a more interesting question is, a more interesting issue is the pandemic came on quickly and forced the criminal justice. system to update its technology and update its and enhance its willingness to deal with certain things, not in person, but by video conferencing and by telephone. And the big question will be

when the pandemic ends, whatever that means, that could be, you know, after a second wave or after a significant period of time, after which we've got some confidence that it's not coming back. Do we just go back to the old way of dealing things? Or have we learned something about efficiencies from the use of technology that was necessary during this time, that won't always be necessary, that we keep around. And I hope the answer is the latter, because I won't bore your listenership with all the details. But there is a lot of wasted time with people sitting in courtrooms, lawyers sitting in courtrooms, waiting to make brief appearances simply to ask something to be rescheduled for two weeks from now. A lot of that should be

dealt with by telephone in my view. The clients are going to save a lot of money, not having to pay for an articling student or a lawyer to drive to a courthouse, wait half an hour, say we need two more weeks before we can schedule this. And then, you know, that enterprise takes, you know, in a given, for a given appearance, takes two hours of a lawyer's time. It's not, it's not necessary. And that can be done over the telephone or by video link. I think there's a lot of things like bail hearings and relatively minor sentencings that, you know, that the parties would consent to having those matters heard by video link. I'm not suggesting that it's a good idea for everything to become virtual. I think that there's a real value in that criminal trials essentially

have to happen in person. You know, we have to have a witness sworn in a box in a witness box and, you know, we sheriff's in a courtroom and accused facing to the extent that it's appropriate facing their accuser and lawyers dealing with things and credibility assessments being made by judges in person. But I think there's a lot of matters that, especially when evidence like witnesses aren't being asked to testify, where we could deal with many, many matters just as efficiently over the, over video link, over telephone without, you know, using a valuable court time. I absolutely agree. As a court worker, to be honest, that was half my job was acting on behalf of clients or trying to just get the date pushed over so they could continue with their treatment

or counseling. And it was valuable court time, other people's time, how many people are sitting in a room all making a certain amount of an hour. And I'm spending it saying, hey, we're just going to kick this over three weeks. Don't even worry about it. Like, it's fine. So I do think that that's important for people to know. What about your business side of things and COVID? What has that been like in terms of having client meetings working with your team i assume zoom or yeah we've we've done a lot of of things by zoom um and we learned uh you know there was a few you know there's a few committees and i'd had occasion to use zoom you know for a few committee meetings and things like that in the past but it's interesting now how everybody has had to and now has developed this

like complete facility around using these online meeting technologies. So we definitely develop that at our firm and of, you know, I think that we've, I think our organization, like a lot of organization, has realized that we can have, we can meet more frequently through that virtual methodology, as opposed to always trying to hurt cats and get everybody in the same room because everybody's got busy schedule. So that's been an improvement. I mean, we've put up a, you know, there's hands. sanitizer everywhere. We've put up a

plexiglass screen in our office for our frontline staff. We've made adjustments to when people are working, so there's not too many people working at a time. I mean, there's adjustments that we've made all the appropriate adjustments in my sense, in my view, in terms of during the pandemic. I don't know

to what extent this will change sort of in the long run. I think there's been a normalization, of working from home in a different way, and I think more people are going to work to set themselves up with a workstation at home where they can do more from home. And I think we've always been, you know, very open to letting our associates work from home when and if they want to, as long as they maintain an appropriate amount of communication and maintain the responsibilities

in terms of work getting done on time. That's never been a huge issue for us. But I think that's, I think in terms of the legal profession, working from home is going to become more normalized. There's no doubt about that. I think that that's a super, super great thing to touch on because it's one of the things I had listened to another podcast with a type of philosopher slash financial person who was kind of talking about what one of his predictions is that we are going to see how Airbnb took over the hotel industry and kind of revolutionized it in a way where now you just contact the person who has a house rather than calling a hotel. And Uber changed your relationship with taxis. Now it's not just one big taxi company. You're dealing

with a person, a name, a rating system. And one of his predictions was you're going to start to see that across all areas. And he included law in that because one of the unique things is there's a lot of large law corporations, but there's also boutique firms where you can get services specifically for exactly what you need and you can contract that very easily. So he predicts that that's kind of coming. I see the video revolution occurring. What do you kind of think of that in terms of being able to start to contract immediately with different groups, different individuals as an opportunity? It's an opportunity. And I think as a lawyer, you're missing the boat if you're not making yourself available to clients virtually. That said, you know, there's an interesting

dynamic in law. And, you know, especially if you don't know your client well, it's a new client, You know, when you meet a client in your office, you know that it's just you and your client speaking. And you know that solicitor client privilege is fairly covering the situation because it's you and it's them and it's a room and you can see them. And you've just closed your boardroom door. You know, an issue that I see with teleconferencing and video conferencing is, you know, a discussion between you and your client, you as a lawyer don't know if this client or potential client has other people in the room, other people listening in. You know, to what extent that is a concern really depends on the situation you're in. But ultimately, say, if you're my client right now and there's another person in there with you and they don't agree to confidentiality, like you've effectively waived solicitor client privilege

and your communications are not protected in that way. So if there's somebody sitting on the other, you know, outside of the field of view of the camera that's listening in to everything, you as a lawyer, have to be concerned about that. You know, and I'm not talking about keeping secret, something untoward. It's about, like, having a level of confidence that, okay, I'm giving my advice to someone, you know, on the basis that this is a solicitor-client, protected conversation with no one else listening in. I think it puts you in a difficult position as a lawyer to not be able to have complete confidence as to who is hearing the advice you're giving. That makes sense. One of the other parts is that as we move towards being able to work more from home, I really hope,

because one of the stigmas within being a lawyer and the law society in general is there's a lot of people with substance use issues and a lot of important lawyers who struggle with those types of things, but I also think that a contributing factor is always being at the office and never being around their family. Do you foresee that amalgamation of work life and home life being a benefit to people who have struggled with substance use due to how demanding their job has been? because there's some lawyers who work ridiculous hours. Right. I mean, I don't know that it's an answer in and of itself to be working more from home. I think for there's, I mean, that's another aspect is like you as a lawyer, you know, we live in Greater Vancouver and we're usually living in close quarters for most people. And it's difficult for people to have sensitive conversations without a child running into

the room if you have kids or it being overheard by people that through the wall or who aren't supposed to hear it. So that's, that's a challenge. Getting to your question, I'm not sure that that's a solution in and of itself to people who work too much or have an unhealthy relationship with drugs and alcohol. I mean, there's some, you know, there's a countervailing concern about sort of what you've drawn out that they are more directly bringing that stress into the household and exposing people that haven't signed up for the legal profession directly to the stress of the situation. And for some people, juggling, interacting with their family at the same time as taking calls from clients and doing hearings over the phone actually makes a situation worse. for them. I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all thing. I think it's, I think in general, though, it's a healthy thing for people to be able to work from home when they see it appropriate to do so, when they see it as a situation that's not going to compromise, you know, the product that they've agreed to offer and to agree to complete for their clients. What ways do you

hope to support your community moving forward? And when you say community, do you mean anything specific to that? No, because one of the things I foresee, and I'm just going to say it, is I think you could start a podcast as well just on topics of relevant legal information because it is hard for people to find someone that they can listen to that they feel comfortable with that can offer updates on the legal community in general because I don't think that that information is brought down to the community as a whole. I've thought about that. I mean, the question is whether or not I can eke out any more time. in a week. And if anybody actually wants to listen to me is the other question. But I love to do

the work that I'm already doing in the legal community, you know, in terms of being involved in the committees I'm involved in and working with in a mentor role to the junior lawyers at my office and working as a, you know, someone that presents at conferences and instructs it at teaching opportunities and things like that. So, you know, I'd love to do more. If there was an opportunity to do a podcast, I wouldn't, I'd consider it. I've got to think about that. I've really enjoyed this experience, by the way, it's been really fun to talk to you so far today. But, you know, I am going to give, you know, I do think at some point I'll give a shot at running for venture again, which is a huge time commitment. And in terms of the community outside of my, um, of the legal profession,

you know, I like to keep time for that as well. And that's why I'm on the board of the, the suicide crisis center of BC and also the Strathcona Community Center Association. And so my schedule's fairly full right now. But it's important to me that I think it's, you know, notwithstanding the things we've said about how highly I think of lawyers, I think it's also a good thing to be interacting with people outside the legal profession as well. Absolutely. Lawyers tend to think of things a certain way, and it's important to see your community through the lens of other professionals and other people that are acting and helping within the

community that don't necessarily see things through a legal lens. I think it's important to get that perspective. Absolutely. Is there anything else you want the listeners to know? No, I just, again, I would just reiterate that I'm really. I really feel grateful that you had me on. It was a real treat to speak with you about this stuff. And I just think you're doing a great job with this podcast.

And good luck with the rest of it. Well, I'm absolutely honored. Please tell people how they can find you online. Sure. They can find me online at, certainly at our website, which is penderlitigation.com. You can find my website there. I'm at Kevin Westell on Twitter and at K. Westell on Instagram.

And you can just put my name into LinkedIn and find. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn as well, so you can find me any of those places. Awesome. Well, we just did two and a half hours. It felt like about half an hour, so it's funny. Awesome. Well, I am very grateful to have you on. It was incredibly intimidating setting this one up just because when you type in your name and your biography.

Oh, you shouldn't feel that. I'm sorry that you felt that way. No worries. It was an honor to have you on. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you for listening.

Kevin was an amazing guest, and I hope you got as much out of it as I did. One thing about lawyers is they absolutely love their coffee, so I thought I'd mention a few great cafes in the lower mainland. First, Amble Coffee, spelled A-M-B-L-E, located on Vedder River at 4-5-4-5-0, Pettawawa Road near Keith Wilson. You can follow them on Instagram at Amble Coffee for more info. Next, we have the Yellow Deli, open Monday to Friday 24-7. They offer very unique drinks, sandwiches, and desserts. Rebecca loves their mellow mocas. They are located on Yale Road in downtown Jilwak.

If you're looking for a fun new experience, you've got to go check them out in Chiluac. For Abbotsford, we recommend trying the Old Hand Coffee. You can find them on Instagram at Old Hand Coffee. They make phenomenal desserts and beverages. They have a really cool atmosphere, so give them a try on Pauline Street in Abbotsford. Thank you. You know, I'm going to be able to be.