PLE events

Upcoming events

Tools for helping people find good legal information – A webinar for community workers

DATE: October 02, 2018 12:00 – 1:15 p.m.

This 75 minute webinar is designed for community workers who help users find legal information. It will outline sources of reliable information as well as the difference between legal information and legal advice. It will also cover Steps to Justice, CLEO’s website for helping clients find step-by-step information about common legal problems. Learn more about the webinar and register here!

Past events

Fall forum for community workers – Tuesday, September 18, 2018

CLEO’s PLE Learning Exchange, a community of practice for community workers who help people with legal problems, convened its annual Fall Forum on Tuesday, September 18, 2018. We gathered at The 519 to learn new skills, share strategies for helping our communities, and give input on new initiatives.

See the materials from the Fall Forum:

     * Download the agenda for the day.
     * Learn more about our Skills and Stories Café sessions.
     * Learn more about the event's presenters and speakers.

The sessions we offered included:

• What difference can PLE make?: how do PLE projects lead to new partnerships and policy change? Interviews with the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton, the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres, and the Gilbert Centre.
• New Research: Hear about first-of-its-kind research led by CLEO in partnership with the York University Institute for Social Research on how public legal education and information (PLEI) can help low- and modest-income people address their civil legal problems.
• Skills & Stories Cafe: Rotate through short, snappy, hands-on learning sessions to build practical skills and hear about successful methods and approaches for PLEI projects.

Fall Forum for Community Workers – October 26, 2017

Thanks to all who participated in the Include, Inform, Inspire event on October 26, 2017! Here are some of the materials shared at the event: 

the Centre for Research and Innovation's new kit: Legal information and referral skills for community workers
The Centre for Research and Innovation's new handout: Guidelines for better legal information
A Powerpoint presentation about the Centre for Research and Innovation's "Guidelines for better legal information" project
CLEO's Powerpoint presentation: Social media: Making it work for your organization

Want to download a copy of the event poster?

Include, Inform, Inspire: Community Legal Information in 2017: We invite you to join us for a forum for community workers and others interested in public legal education and information (PLE or PLEI) that will take place in Toronto on Thursday, October 26, 2017. We will gather at the Chestnut Conference Centre (Dundas St. W. and Chestnut St.) from 10:00 – 4:00 to hone our PLEI skills, connect with new resources, and share strategies for helping our clients and communities. Ontario’s PLE Learning Exchange, a partnership of CLEO (Community Legal Education Ontario) and OJEN (Ontario Justice Education Network), is hosting this event as part of Ontario’s Access to Justice week, supported by The Action Group on Access to Justice (TAG).

Register through Eventbrite for our event.

The sessions we are planning include:

• Legal information and legal advice: how are direct service workers filling the gaps?
• The role of “Trusted Intermediaries”: updates and feedback on recent research
• Skills cafe: hands-on learning about clear language, social media for PLEI, and other skills
• Strategy swap: how to help clients when asserting their legal rights isn’t practical

The early bird registration fee will be $10. Please register through Eventbrite. Or, if you need more information before registering, email Miscia at miscia.sullivan@cleo.on.ca. And watch this space for updates!

• Connect, Create, Communicate: Public Legal Education and the Access to Justice Movement – October 2016
  This conference, presented in association with the PLE Learning Exchange and the Public Legal Education Association of Canada, was part of The Action Group on Access to Justice’s Access to Justice Week in 2016. It was open to legal professionals, community workers, students, and other people working in access to justice and doing public legal education and information (PLEI). Some of the topics explored were: use of technology in delivering PLEI, plain language communities, training and supporting “go-to” intermediaries, and advances in PLEI.
• PLE Learning Exchange Symposium – June 1, 2015
  We hosted another day of this discussion this year. We shared experiences with and learned from others who are working to increase understanding of legal rights within communities across Ontario. For more information, click here.
• Helping library users find good legal information – A webinar for library staff across Ontario
  This webinar, provided by CLEO, is designed for library staff who help library users find legal information. It will provide tools and strategies for helping library users find accurate, accessible legal information to begin to address their legal issues. 1 hours 15 minutes in duration. Presented by Michelle Cader of CLEO. (March 31, 2015)
• Helping your clients find good legal information – A presentation to the Credit Counselling Society of Canada
  This webinar provides tools and strategies for helping your clients find accurate, accessible legal information to begin to address their legal issues. It covers the following topics: CLEO’s online and print information; how to find specific legal information through CLEO; working through consumer law case scenarios to find online legal information. (March 7, 2015)
• Better legal information: the how-to’s of plain language – the sequel
  This webinar explores practical techniques to create easy-to-understand legal information for the public. (August 13, 2014)
• Better Legal Information: The How-To’s of Plain Language
  This one-hour webinar looks at practical techniques to create easy-to-understand legal information for the public. (March 6, 2014)
• Using online tools to help us assess our PLE work
  This one-hour webinar looks at how to use a number of free or low-cost online tools to acquire data to measure your impact and align your key performance indicators or KPIs. (October 24, 2013)
• Making an Impact: Public Legal Education in Canada Conference
  Legal and community workers from across Canada met at the annual PLEAC (Public Legal Education Association of Canada) conference. Participants showcased innovative PLE projects and shared promising practices in communication, collaboration, design, and research and evaluation. (October 2012)
• PLEI Connect webinars
  PLEI Connect is a national initiative that facilitates and delivers webinars and web labs to demonstrate how technology can be applied to create, deliver and evaluate public legal education and information.  View their archived webinars in our PLE and Technology section.

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