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When Pro Bono Students Canada was founded at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 1996, it was the first such organization to set up shop in this country. What started as a local program with a few passionate law students and a handful of community partners has expanded, 20 years later, to include 21 law schools in eight provinces in Canada.

Each year the program trains a small army of law students to provide thousands of vulnerable Canadians with vital legal assistance. And yet, two decades after PBSC was founded, the access to justice crisis remains more dire than ever.

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While the poorest among us suffer the most, middle-income Canadians increasingly find themselves shut out of a system that is too expensive, too slow and too complex to navigate.

Family law is often cited as an example of where the system touches many of our lives, and for good reason: divorce is both common (four in 10 marriages will end) and expensive (the average two-day trial costs $30,000).