Legal Aid Ontario staff

We have helpful information for staff who work for Legal Aid Ontario, including:

• Legal Aid Ontario’s contact centre
• duty counsel in the courts

We would like to make the client’s experience of accessing community legal services as seamless as possible. We believe it is important to take a holistic approach with people who contact us for help. Please do not hesitate to contact us directly for help with your client’s problems.

View our January 2021 presentation to Legal Aid staff on Community Legal Clinics, “CLC 101 & Referring people to clinics,” for more information.

Here are some ways we can help you:

• give same day answers to your questions about how we can help your callers or clients through our service provider hotline, 613-966-8686, or email.
• understand how CALC helps locally with legal problems, including:
  • Housing – tenant rights, evictions, arrears, maintenance and disrepair
  • Income – Ontario Works, Ontario Disability, Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security
  • Employment – employment insurance, employment standards, wrongful dismissal, harassment
  • Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB) – benefits denied, benefits cut off, unsafe work
  • Consumer and debt – collection agencies, energy contracts, bank garnishment, student loans, payday loans
  • Abuse or Victims of Crime – Criminal Injuries Compensation, two-hour family law certificates
  • Human rights and discrimination – rentals, employment, public services
  • Education – special education, suspensions and expulsions
  • Seniors – Powers of Attorney, wills, long-term care, retirement homes
  • Commissioning or notarizing documents

Clients can call CALC between 9:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday.  They should have any paperwork or decision letters about their problem with them for the call.

• provide a special referral form to help you refer efficiently to us.
• send a “legal health” awareness poster that you can display in your office or workspace to help red-flag the legal issues we help with
• offer interpreters for those who are Deaf or whose first language is not English
• provide legal information workshops for you and your co-workers
• link to CLEO’s Steps to Justice website that makes legal information easy to understand

These are some of the ways you can help us:

• identify when your clients have legal problems we can help with
• refer clients to us as soon as possible
• put a shortcut to our site on your computer’s desktop to make it easy to find legal information

Some resources that you will find helpful:

• Where to Go For Help chart – information and services for many types of problems
• “Legal health” awareness chart – common phrases and questions that community legal clinics can help with
• presentation about our services
• CLEO’s Steps to Justice website