Courthouse Libraries BC (CLBC) provides support to clients through our Legal Community Training Program (Program). This includes training sessions, orientations, and instructional videos that promote both substantive legal knowledge and skill-based learning. As part of our Program, we partner with organizations to develop content that members of the Law Society of BC (LSBC) can claim for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credit.
The Program format includes:
- Live webinars hosted on the Zoom platform
- Archived webinars available on Vimeo
- In-person orientations and training sessions.
Content is designed for the BC legal community, including LSBC members, court clerks, articling students, and Notaries Public. While primarily created for legal professionals, our online content is accessible to all BC residents through the live webinar platform and the archived Vimeo videos. This audience may include anyone including community advocates, public and law librarians, self-represented litigants, and the public.
For training that is aimed primarily at the general public, we refer potential partners to work with other community partners, such as People’s Law School.
Program strategy
CLBC provides accessible, free training for the legal community of BC by sharing staff expertise and legal community expertise via partnerships.
To share staff knowledge, we create instructional materials on a variety of research topics, including but not limited to:
- Library resources such as databases, precedents, and international material
- Legislation and caselaw research
- Library services
To share legal community expertise, CLBC partners with organizations that align with our Vision, Mission, and Values. We actively engage in collaborative efforts that foster meaningful discourse, promote information sharing, and contribute to the exchange of expertise within the legal community.
By partnering with members of the legal community, non-profit organizations, and government agencies, CLBC provides training designed to meet the needs of its clients. By building a bridge between partner expertise and CLBC expertise, the Program connects legal content back to legal research skills and our library collections.
Content Criteria
The Program uses the following criteria to inform content selection.
The Program includes content aimed at BC’s legal community and promotes the use of CLBC’s services, including legal databases and print collection for research and self-directed learning and:
- increased understanding of practical and theoretical legal concepts and procedures;
- greater appreciation of laws and the legal system;
- ethical conduct within the legal profession;
- well-being within the legal profession;
- practice management within the legal profession; and/or
- access to publicly available legal information produced by the legal profession, non-profit organizations, and government.
The Program does not include content that is:
- primarily intended to advance the agenda of a political party;
- defamatory or discriminatory, or promoting illegal activities; or
- intended to solicit business for commercial businesses, including but not limited to law firms.
Partnership
We value collaboration and partnerships.
The Program will work with partners who:
- Align with our Vision, our Mission, and our Values
- Meet the content criteria
- Work with our Program team in a respectful manner
- Support access to legal information
CLBC operates within resource limits and may not be able to accommodate all requests from potential partners. While we value collaboration and partnerships, we prioritize initiatives that align with our strategic goals and available resources.
CLBC can offer:
- Promotion of the training session through CLBC channels
- Set up and support for participant registration
- Physical space for hosting educational sessions
- Technical and logistical support throughout a webinar broadcast
- Recording of webinars for the purposes of archiving training sessions in the CLBC webinar archives
- Collection of anonymous participant feedback
Please note that sessions are generally held on weekdays between 8.30 am to 4:00 pm.
Our training partners are responsible for:
- Finding subject matter experts, and coordinating the presentation with them
- Preparing presentation content
- Promoting the training session through their own channels
- Providing any financial support on an as-needed basis to compensate subject matter experts for expenses associated with delivering the training
For more information or to apply for a partnership with CLBC, please contact training@courthouselibrary.ca.
Last updated September 2025