PLEO in 2021
An interview with PLEO founder, Martha Rans
As we begin a new year, PLEO is hard at work developing new legal resources and programming for non-profits, arts organizations and artists alike – all designed to increase access to justice and ease the hard work of managing a society or artistic career.
This year, our priorities are building the foundation for a National Network of Legal Clinics for the Arts, launching the first iteration of our Legal Self Assessment and Learning Tool (LSALT), and piloting Canada’s first legal clinic dedicated to non-profits.
Embarking on a new year, we want to take a moment to reflect on how we got here, on the cusp of several exciting initiatives. To do this, I sat down with founder and Legal Director Martha Rans to shed light on PLEO’s roots, purpose and future.
Martha founded Artists’ Legal Outreach (ALO) in 2003, seeking to establish avenues of legal support for low-income artists and artist organizations by way of workshops, webinars and digital resources. Of all these modes of support, ALO’s pro bono clinic for low-income artists became the bedrock. Throughout this journey, Martha’s work also filled many gaps in legal knowledge in the non-profit sector as a recognized expert on the Societies Act and the Human Rights code. Having lectured on the topic to more than 3000 societies from Ucluelet to Williams Lake, Prince George and Cranbrook and all points in between, Martha has advocated for public legal education and information throughout her 25+ years working in the legal profession.
In 2010, ALO changed its name to Pacific Legal Education and Outreach Society, or PLEO, to establish a home for the organization’s work supporting artists and arts organizations as well as non-profit societies outside of the arts and culture sector. PLEO delivers its mission through both ALO and Law For Non-Profits, each providing educational programming, information, resources and advice.
Law for Non-Profits has a substantial history in developing and delivering legal education while also mentoring young lawyers, Indigenous lawyers and female lawyers in small towns to deliver better legal services. As the non-profit sector is critical to the social and economic wellbeing of British Columbia, contributing more collectively to British Columbia’s GDP than forestry, Law for Non-Profits aims to provide legal education and information in order for these societies to continue their important work in the community without being sidelined by a legal crisis.
Why do you think PLEO’s work is important? What gaps does PLEO fill?
Martha: I didn’t start this organization with any other idea in my head then to change how people access the law. There is an enormous gap for artists to access legal advice. PLEO is a way to deliver those services, give back to the community, and provide access to justice.
Our purpose to service non-profits is also rooted in the fact that I myself came out of the non-profit sector. I spent 5 years as a community development worker in Northern Ontario and in Africa before I went to law school, and I directly saw the impact of legal support in the sector. During this time, I worked on the first and only charter challenge that led to the inclusion of domestic workers in legislation.
Because of this experience, I was able to see the law as a tool for social justice, and I went into the law school with the expressed purpose of returning to the non-profit sector as a lawyer.
Personally, why are you passionate about our work?
Martha: I’ve believed profoundly in social justice my whole life, and access to justice is a critical part of social, economic, racial and environmental justice. Without access to justice, we are forever going to be playing catch up, and we’re going to leave people out.
To the extent that I can have an impact on including more people in providing access to justice to more folks that have been historically left out of the system, left on the margins, the more I will have felt that I’ve done what I was put on the earth to do, to change people’s lives on legal issue at a time.
How long have you been on this journey to build PLEO?
Martha: On the one hand, I’ve always been on this journey. I was raised by two people who were profoundly committed to the redistribution of wealth as a fundamental understanding in our political system. They were dedicated to anti-racism, fighting anti-semitism and gender equality. I’ve probably been on this journey since birth.
How far has PLEO come? What have you seen us accomplish?
Martha: Right now we are poised to develop the first pilot legal clinic for non-profits in the country. I’m excited at the prospect and yet slightly terrified because no one’s done this before. We’re going to try to figure out how to do it within a fairly narrow budget, but also in a way that recognizes and harnesses the power of technology, with the potential of operating a clinic “in the cloud,” if you will.
We also produced the first major legal needs assessment of the arts and culture sector across Canada to help us begin the process of developing a National Network of Legal Clinics for the Arts. This is something I spoke about at the CARFAC National Conference 10 years ago, and in the 2020 report we produced, “Now More Than Ever: Towards a National Network of Legal Clinics for the Arts”.
It’s a huge moment of potential. The pandemic created a need for more services right now. We have provided more content, more webinars, more opportunities to connect and learn both with lawyers and legal support folks as well as within our communities - whether it’s within the arts or in a myriad of non-profits.
Now we need all the help we can get so that all our services can be focussed on responding to the needs of the community in light of COVID-19.
The time really is now. I know it’s hard for people, we’re seeing tremendous and catastrophic losses in the arts and culture sector in particular. At the same time, this is exactly the time when people need help, and we need to do everything we can to get it to them. That’s why we’re embarking on various efforts to fundraise, to reach out to funders, the community, and deliver on the promise of access to justice for artists, arts organizations, and the non-profit sector at large.
What are your dreams for PLEO’s future? What do you think we’re capable of achieving?
Martha: My dream for the future is to demonstrate to the next generation of lawyers, law students, legal academics, and the community itself that we can envision access to justice by creating a publicly funded system of legal clinics that supports everybody from coast to coast.
There’s an enormous gap in terms of access to justice. I think that we will show people that even without the support of certain levels of government and certain funders that where there’s a will there’s a way, and we need to harness all of the great ideas that the next generation of practitioners and students have.
Law students keep telling me that they want to do good for the community, but there aren’t many opportunities for them to do that. We need to create those opportunities, see the gaps, and start filling them. We need to start now.
My dream is that in the not so distant future we will have a staff lawyer or two and legal advocates by our side. We will have the next generation of practitioners leading this organization in supporting and nurturing other ideas with the support of governmental systems to provide meaningful access to justice for people in the province of BC and the country of Canada.
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Angela Vannatter (she/her)
Living and working on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations, Angela joined the PLEO team in May 2020 as a Communications Manager. Following her graduation from Simon Fraser University’s Communications program, Angela gained incredible interest in how words, sounds, and visual mediums have the capacity to tell stories in ways that resonate with all parts of ourselves. Having grown up surrounded by theatre, set to the tune of classic rock since childhood, these formative experiences birthed a passion for arts and culture, making the pursuit of access to justice for artists and non-profits an opportunity Angela was eager to be a part of.