Serving a Francophone client requires a holistic approach and close collaboration with community partners to ensure a seamless and consistent French-language experience. A collective effort is needed to serve Francophone clients effectively. This is why, during the training phase, candidates meet various Francophone partners providing complementary and related services, such as non-profit organizations assisting tenants, legal clinics, accountants, and insurance brokers, to whom they can refer future clients for a seamless French-language service experience.

Over 300 lawyers have contributed to the development and implementation of the LPP since its inception. 

To guide its vision and actions, the French Law Practice Program (LPP) has established an advisory committee composed of committed and dynamic legal professionals, including judges, lawyers, and professors who stand out for their exceptional contributions to the practice of law.

Committee members were invited to join the LPP Advisory Committee because of their expertise in specific areas of law and their excellent reputations within Ontario’s Francophone legal community. The committee provides general guidance to meet the unique needs of the Franco-Ontarian community. Members also help promote the LPP within the legal community and support the directors and practitioner instructors in developing a curriculum that addresses the community’s particular needs. 

Awareness and understanding of linguistic rights are essential to realizing those rights, including the right to access justice in the official language of one’s choice in certain contexts. For this reason, the Law Society of Ontario’s Code of Professional Conduct stipulates that lawyers must inform clients of their linguistic rights.

To ensure candidates meet or exceed their professional responsibilities regarding linguistic rights, the LPP has added the following competencies to the list of essential skills required to complete the training phase successfully:

• Respecting and promoting clients’ linguistic rights; and
• Demonstrating an understanding of lawyers’ duties to ensure access to justice in French.

These competencies are evaluated multiple times during the training phase in various contexts. All candidates in the first three LPP cohorts demonstrated mastery of competencies related to access to justice in French. It is, therefore, no surprise that 100% of candidates reported that the LPP significantly increased their awareness of linguistic rights and lawyers’ obligations to inform clients about these rights. 

The LPP aims to train lawyers capable of delivering high-quality services in French. To achieve this, it is essential to ensure there are enough bilingual and skilled lawyers to meet the needs of the Francophone community.

One of the program’s requirements is that candidates must be able to communicate and practice in French in a legal context, whether with the public or within the legal community. The LPP is not an immersion program but an intensive, practical training program offered in French—a rarity in a minority linguistic context. As such, the LPP places significant emphasis on candidates’ language skills.