Thank you for the question.
I'm going to answer the second part of it first, if I might. I think that what judges need to know is somewhat different from what lawyers need to know. The training work I did with Legal Aid Ontario was aimed not just at lawyers but at all of their staff, and in addition to understanding what intimate partner violence is, it was very much focused on coercive control and how to identify it. That's not really something a judge is in a position to be doing to the same extent.
While I think there are some commonalities between the work that we did with Legal Aid Ontario, the education that we're talking about for judges—and Cee Strauss has gone into this in some detail in their presentation—needs to focus on what's going to help a judge make a decision when they're hearing two stories very differently told by the two parties who are appearing in front of them.
As for whether or not the work we did with Legal Aid Ontario was effective, I would say yes, although I'm probably not an impartial judge of that. One of the things that was great about it was that it happened before the pandemic, so we could train people in person sitting in a room having conversations, and I think that's a really important part of learning. It was a full day of training, so it was rich in terms of the material that we could cover. The evaluations that were completed by the participants were extremely positive.
Maybe this is the most telling thing I can say, Michelle, in response to your question. A lot of people came to that training reluctantly, thinking they already knew what they needed to know or thinking that they were going to be turned into anti-father, biased lawyers. I can't tell you how many people spoke to me personally at the end of those days of training, saying, “Wow, this isn't what I was expecting at all. I learned a lot here. I'm going to be able to take these very practical tools away and put them into practice in my work as a lawyer representing moms, dads, children and various people who require representation in family court.”
You'd have to talk to Legal Aid to get a more comprehensive assessment as to whether or not they feel that there have been long-term benefits from the training, but even three years after we completed that contract, we still hear from lawyers who say how helpful it was to them.