Paralegals and tribunal practice and procedure

"This book was written for Paralegals and everyone else who may be involved in an administrative tribunal (agency, board, or commission) to better help the reader understand the basics of administrative law and then to use such knowledge to understand the practices and procedures of a number of tribunals. It is meant to provide a template for paralegals and others to look through a tribunal?s website and pick out and interpret key documents needed to understand the practice and procedures of such tribunal. The final result should allow the reader to be prepared to appear before any tribunal and understand the steps necessary to present an effective ?case? to the tribunal. To assist the reader, the book starts with an overview of administrative law, focusing on the principles flowing from procedural fairness followed by a partially annotated version of the Ontario Statutory Power Procedures Act, and then a brief discussion of good advocacy skills from three different sources working in the tribunal world. Part II of the book starts with a preamble looking at clustering in Ontario tribunals and then consists of four chapters looking at various Ontario tribunals (the SBT, the ARB, the HRTO, and the LAT, of which the focus is on the Automobile Accident Benefits Service (AABS)), all are important areas of employment for licensed paralegals in law firms and in sole practice. Each chapter first looks at the enabling legislation for each such tribunal, then the documents that set out the practices and procedures, including the rules and forms with a discussion of some case and decision law, if accessible, relevant to the tribunal, followed by some relevant documents provided in the appendix to each chapter. The cases and decisions are discussed and in a few situations briefed to focus the reader on the importance of cases and decisions in helping a tribunal make an appropriate and fair decision in a matter. Part III consists of a chapter on the federal CHRT using the same template as used in the Ontario tribunals in part II in order to provide a reader with a comparison between federal and Ontario tribunals."