Yellowknife lawyer Karen Wilford is the recipient of the nationally regarded Legal Help Leader Award, handed out by the Canadian Bar Association.
“I was incredibly astonished,” she explained of final week’s announcement. “I experienced not been mindful that I experienced been nominated, so when the announcement arrived out, it took me aback really a bit.”
Wilford, the govt director of the NWT Legal Assist Fee, received the award for “long-phrase determination to legal support and to giving accessible and cost-effective authorized solutions to the inhabitants.”
“I come to feel extremely humbled by being the recipient,” she mentioned. “There are a lot of, quite a few men and women across the region who operate away at authorized help, no matter whether it’s frontline counsel or inside management or aid staff members. There are a ton of individuals out there who do this do the job. It’s really vital perform.”
The accolade also serves as recognition of legal help legal professionals who have produced a considerable contribution in delivering entry to justice for individuals in need.
Wilford’s profession started out all through her time in Ontario, wherever the company she labored for was “progressive and neighborhood minded.”
“This worldview matched my own upbringing, which incorporated a robust commitment to supplying back again and lifting up people fewer lucky,” she stated. “Even though the operate was substantially fewer remunerative, it has constantly been crucial to me to bring motion to those values.”
All round, she has been involved in lawful support for extra than 30 years.
“I have practised authorized support get the job done in one type or a different my whole job,” she explained. “So when I was in personal exercise back again in Ontario, I normally built certain that a sure percentage of my perform was devoted to shoppers who ended up on authorized assist certificates. And then in 2004, I moved from Ontario to Nunavut and, at that issue, I turned a full-time authorized support employees lawyer and labored inside the Nunavut authorized assist system until finally 2012… and right here in Yellowknife, I’m a team law firm for authorized aid. For about two years, I was the territory’s children’s lawyer and then I acquired enticed back again to authorized support in the current purpose as its director.”
Due to the fact moving to Yellowknife in May well 2012, Wilford has served as the govt director of the Legislation Modern society of the Northwest Territories for 4 decades, including as president.
As properly, Wilford is an NWT council member with the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, where by she has served as co-chair of the federation’s Truth and Reconciliation Fee Advisory Committee.