Rounding out the eight sponsoring candidates are Mitch Kowalski, Katherine Henshell, Christopher Bredt, Susan Hare, Dorette Pollard, and Susan Richer. Each candidate will have a participating spot on at least one of the three panels.

The first panels will take place on Tuesday, March 29, and Thursday, March 31. Panellists will include the sponsoring candidates and fellow bencher hopeful Stephen Pitel, and will be moderated by law professor Adam Dodek, Tom Claridge of Lawyers Weekly, and Melissa Kluger of Precedent. The panels will give bencher candidates the opportunity to discuss and voice their opinions on a wide range of hot topics, including the role of the Law Society of Upper Canada, work-life balance, LSUC fees, access to justice, and public perception of the profession.

The third and final panel on Monday, April 4, will deal with the future of law and articling and will be of special interest to law students. The discussion, moderated by Glenn Kauth of Law Times, will examine issues such as mentoring, the future of articling positions, and fee exemptions for unemployed lawyers.

The technology making this forum available is quite simple. The audience will be able to listen in on the discussion among the participants and moderator and can pose questions to the panel. Essentially, it’s a huge conference call through a computer.

“New technology allows us to have a broader-ranging discussion and reach many people, and we definitely need to engage as many people as we can,” McRobert says.

But he warns: “New technology allows a new connectivity. The connectedness is powerful but it has risks.”

He cites BlackBerrys and e-mails as things that make lawyers accessible all of the time. “Clients are sending off e-mails and they want a response in 24 hours,” McRobert says.

Encouraging these discussions, McRobert hopes, will promote participation among law society members. “It’s important for people to feel like they have a chance to influence the path of the law society. It will promote transparency and accountability.”

McRobert also hopes the event will become a tradition as a forum for lawyers to have their voices heard and offer suggestions for change to presiding benchers. “I wanted to offer an opportunity to do something different, to get more people involved. I would love for this to be the precedent for us to have discussions about the future of the law society.”

More information on how to access to virtual town halls will be available soon on the Law Times bencher election web site.