Pivot Legal

The idea for Pivot Legal Society came to me in the summer of 2000. I had been working at Ecojustice and the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, which are both located right next to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. I had a long-running interest in the issues of the neighborhood and it was easy to see that there were huge problems simply by walking down the streets. In my view they were systemic problems, created by bad laws and policies.

Both Ecojustice and the Wilderness committee are campaign organizations, which use the media and challenge injustice to advance the public interest. All this came together in my head one day and I realized that there was an opportunity to apply the campaign strategies of these organizations in a non-environmental context - in a social justice context - in order to advance the interests of people living in the Downtown Eastside. And that's basically how the idea got started.

The first person I spoke with about the idea of Pivot was Ann Livingston who was the coordinator of VANDU (The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users). I walked into their office one day with a proposal to start a legal organization for drug users and residents of the Downtown Eastside. They were extremely supportive and we began having meetings at the VANDU office. I was responsible for bringing in and coordinating lawyers. They brought in residents, and provided the space and food.  Katrina Pacey was among the first people to join - she was just a first year law student at the time, and the crew of UBC law students she brought with her are still all involved.  Over the course of about a year of meetings, we came to identify the main priorities facing residents. And that's how Pivot's main campaign areas emerged - police accountability, sex work law reform, housing and homelessness, and addiction and treatment. David Eby joined shortly afterwards, volunteering on the policing campaign with me and taking affidavits on the corner of Main and Hastings.  Since then thousands of people have become involved, as staff, donors or volunteers, and we have been able to take on issues like private security, violence against women, and child protection to our campaign areas.

Pivot Legal LLP as an idea emerged several years after Pivot Legal Society was established. The idea of selling legal services to raise money for our campaigns came out of discussions between Katrina and I.  Katrina pointed to the example of the Compassion Club, and asked; what can WE sell to raise money? LOL! The idea took shape from there.  Many people were involved in building out the concept; David Eby, Mary Childs, Steve Mulhall, and many others.  We had a great team of legal and financial advisors to refine the concept of a social enterprise law firm. In 2006 we submitted a business plan for the law firm to the BC Small Business Plan Contest, and won second prize. That helped us secure some loan funding (shout-out to Vancity and Renewal Partners) to get the law firm started. Although over the years we have explored many many iterations of the idea, looking back at the first vision document we wrote in January of 2004, its amazing how closely Pivot Legal LLP has kept to the original idea. 

The vision is that the LLP would be a law firm that existed for the sole purpose of serving the public interest, by providing accessible legal services, by creating an financially independent community of public interest lawyers, and by using its profits and expertise to advance the interests of marginalized persons. Our broader strategy was that the LLP would enable Pivot to break out of the economic constraints of traditional non-profits, which are always limited in their impact by the amount of money they are able to fundraise.  The financial advantage of the LLP is that it will be able to support public interest campaigns wherever there is demand for legal services - which is everywhere. Pivot Legal LLP is now it its third year, and it is well on track to achieving its goal of supporting a broad movement of law for social change throughout Canada.