I have never ever been a formatting or citation fanatic (don’t come for me, avid McGill Cite Guide champions). But I do as I was taught: headings to keep my work organized, especially for judges who read a plethora of material daily; proper citations where appropriate. Dot your i’s, cross your t’s. All that legal hocus pocus.
However, all of a sudden, my life has been turned upside down (I exaggerate, but stick with me as I make a point). I was told that including headings in my report was inappropriate. Self-indulgent even. It risked reducing a person’s life to mere categories, which in effect risks violating their integrity. This feedback struck me. It was so drastically distinct from the academic legal world, made up of fictitious fact patterns and 1930 cases about a snail in a ginger beer.
Footnotes with ibid and supra were also a big no, because the judge needed to know exactly which interview you were citing at every point of the report. They don’t have time to flip through my precious footnotes to find supra note 32.
Most notably, the McGill B curve has no standing here in the real world (insert gasp). Instead, my work has implications on someone’s life and their potential loss of liberty.
No headings. No ibid. No supra. No B curve. This cannot be.
What has been taught in the classroom is not the same as real life. An obvious point indeed, but human rights work carries a supplementary layer.
Gladue reports, for those who do not know, essentially requires meeting with an Indigenous offender, sitting with them, and hearing them recall some of the most traumatic experiences of their life. Quite possibly the first time they have recounted these stories to anyone ever. From there, I interview at least two personal connections, either a family member or a friend, to compose a narrative that encapsulates this individual’s story. The objective is to reflect potential Gladue principles, such as intergenerational trauma stemming from residential schools, loss of culture, and any other ongoing impacts of colonialism that this client may have endured. A judge then reads said report and considers it in their sentencing decision. So, after some training, I am entrusted with the most sensitive and vulnerable aspects of someone’s life.
And that is where something unexpected happens: even something as small as headings starts to matter.
While I included headings to organize my mock report, they left the wrong impression. I received feedback that my headings had reduced my mock client’s life into segmented categories: school, employment, grandparents, community life, etc. They were no longer a person with a narrative, but a file to be analyzed. In this practice report, I (unintentionally) reduced an individual to the sum of their circumstances.
This was the last thing I wanted to do.
I try never to lose sight of the fact that receiving a legal education is an immense privilege. One of which I hope to use to do a world of good. Working within the field of human rights and advocating for vulnerable people and communities has always driven me. It is the reason I find myself in law school. It is the reason I endure the hundreds of pages of reading each week (shout out pubdocs). The goal is to be the best lawyer I can be, so I can do the best work I can do, and help the most people I can. A simple aspiration, really.
However, what I am learning in human rights work is that while the drive to help people is important, so is understanding how my actions, assumptions, and even formatting choices can shape the way a person’s story is received. The challenge is not simply to advocate for someone, but to do so in a manner that preserves their dignity, integrity, humanity, and agency.
The lesson was not really about headings at all (but hopefully it served as a useful metaphor). It was about perspective. I had approached the report as a law student trained to categorize facts and present them as clearly as possible. The feedback challenged me to approach it instead as a listener and storyteller, entrusted with carrying someone’s vulnerable experiences onto the page.
In a people-centred field like human rights law, a good lawyer may have remarkable writing skills, but a great lawyer is one with thoughtfulness, attunement, and empathy.
They have the discipline to show up as a human rather than a lawyer when the work calls for it.
