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Congratulations Johanne Blenkin, New Director of UVic Access to Justice Centre for Excellence (ACE
Dr. Susan Breau
Building Better Communities, one grant at a time
This appointment was made possible by funding from the Law Foundation of BC, The Notary Foundation of BC, and the BC Ministry of Attorney General.
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Johanne Blenkin as Director of the UVic Access to Justice Centre for Excellence (ACE).
Johanne has a BA and an LLB from the University of Alberta and an MLS from McGill University. She has extensive experience working in the province’s justice sector as legal counsel and in legal information management. Between 2004 and 2017, she was Chief Executive Officer of the BC Courthouse Library Society, working closely with justice sector partners to manage the increasing role of technology in access to, and the integrity of, legal information.
In that capacity she led the development of Clicklaw, the public legal education website and the LawMatters program with public libraries, Johanne was a founding member of Access to Justice BC (A2JBC) and a member of the secretariat supporting the Executive Committee, the Planning Committee, and the Measurement Working Group of A2JBC.
Johanne was a Director on CanLii’s (Canadian Legal Information Institute)
Johanne Belkin first Board and worked closely with the Law Society of BC and others to make BC legislation freely available online. As legal counsel, she worked primarily in family law with an emphasis on mediation and collaborative law.
In her role as Director, Johanne will be responsible for advancing ACE’s objective of actively engaging the law school with the justice system in a collaborative way, in particular with respect to developing and collecting data standards that can be shared across the sector and developing metrics to better measure services. This work will be in the context of advancing access to justice related to the delivery of legal services at both a provincial and national level.
Jerry McHale, QC, founder of ACE and a leader in justice reform, will remain on
Jerry McHale the ACE Faculty Advisory Committee. Lam Chair Robert Lapper, QC, Lam Chair in Law and Public Policy, will join the Advisory Committee.
Robert Lapper ACE will build on the outstanding work done to date by Jerry McHale and his colleagues at ACE.
Johanne’s term started August 1, 2019. She will be located within the Law Library, room 270b. She can be reached at acedirector@uvic.ca and 250 472-4850.
I would like to thank Jerry McHale, QC, for his work to secure funding for, and advancing the work of, ACE. I would also like to thank the selection committee members Jerry McHale, Michelle Lawrence, and Tim Richards for their work. s Dr. Susan Breau is Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, BC.
