Betty Dykstra (York Region Law Association) & George Hawtin (Simcoe Law Association) spoke on behalf of a consortia of libraries who are offering joint registrarion for lawyers to save money on attending LSO CPD sessions that LiRN encourages every library to participate in this valuable service for lawyers.
They have created a group registration system that saves their lawyers’ money by purchasing volume discounts on attendance at CPD sessions across associations. To be efficient, they use a joint Google Sheet that library staff from across Ontario can use to sign up their interested lawyers who wish to attend CPD programmes by joining in minimum groups of 11 lawyers to get a volume discount.
This is a great goodwill initiative that will save your lawyers money and help promote the library as a key resource for their CPD needs.
At last year’s Best Practices session at the Learn with LiRN conference, Betty & George shared their recent innovation that they developed with Pia Williams (Waterloo Region Law Association), as well as Durham and Lincoln. After their session at LwL 2023, another 8 associations joined this group to help their lawyers save money on their CPD needs.
At the 2024 March LwL Curriculum session, they updated the network and encouraged others to join their group.
Participation – All Welcome
LiRN encourages your participation in this great way to offer CPD to your lawyers across Ontario. We view it as a great opportunity to facilitate access to CPD and would be great to offer it at as many locations as possible as part of our equity of access to CPD for all lawyers.
Under the Additional Library Services and Responsibilities Policy adopted by LiRN in 2020, LiRN included CPD activities as Library-related activities unless they are for the profit of the association, or if they are substantially original in content which means event organization by library staff which often takes HOURS and is not considered a library skill set. For further information – please see Policies on the LiRN website.
WRLA charges a non-member admin fee, so non member lawyers can also participate.
Who should you contact to join?
Please contact either George Hawtin, Betty Dykstra, Pia Williams, or Kel Elliott to join the group.
What will you have to do?
In addition to registering your lawyers in their Google Doc, you are also responsible for ensuring the lawyers who are getting the savings, pay the invoice provided by the Group.
It is not fair for the supporting law association who pays the bulk fee to also have to track down individual lawyers for their payment.
Savings for Lawyers
- WRLA reports that their members that they have saved so much money in CPD fees that it promoted membership in their local association. WRLA saved their members just under $23,000 between January 1, 2024 – March 8, 2024, as part of this group.
- DCLA said that they have saved their lawyers around $3,000 so far.
- Lincoln lawyers saved $8,720 in 2023. This year to date– they have already saved their lawyers $7,610.
In 2025, the group made 1,258 registrations for 31 programs (that’s how many programs met the 11-registrant viability threshold), saving lawyers a total of $230,929.29, less any admin fees that went to individual law associations. 17 associations took part – Everyone is welcome.