Road Lawyer

UVic Law grad Michelle Kinney thrives on being at the forefront of change—and it shows in how she runs both her practice and her life.  As the definition of what constitutes a family has evolved, so too has the law—at least in BC, and elsewhere in Canada—in part because of the work of Kinney, LLB ’06.

As one of the architects of the BC Family Law Act, which modernized family law in the province and provided a template for the federal Divorce Act, Kinney has worked with the BC and Nunavut governments and in her private family and fertility law practice to further law reform initiatives. Law reform is her passion project, she says. And as families continue to evolve, Kinney is helping the law adapt and reflect these societal changes.

Unconventional path

Growing up on her family’s apple orchard in Summerland, BC, Kinney never envisioned becoming a lawyer. She rode horses and was an avid reader. Although she did well in school, she also had a taste for adventure. After high school, she and a friend travelled across North America hopping freight trains. “We were these two little hippie girls, and we would go to all these Rainbow Gatherings,” she recalls.

In the summer of 1993, Kinney heard about anti-logging protests in Clayoquot Sound and returned to Canada to take part. Those protests would become the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history until surpassed by the 2021 Fairy Creek blockades.

Kinney and her friend were among the 856 people arrested that summer, and she served three weeks in a men’s minimum-security prison in Nanaimo because there was no room in the women’s prison. “I remember thinking at the time that I can volunteer to get arrested—because that’s essentially what you did—because it’s not like I’m going to be a cop or a lawyer,” she laughs. Kinney adds that although she doesn’t have a criminal record, she does have to disclose her incarceration when she applies to any law society.

After her release from jail, Kinney criss-crossed the country with stops in Quebec and Salt Spring Island before returning to Summerland as a single mom, living in a trailer on her parents’ property and working at a grocery store. “I remember one day it hitting: ‘This is not going to be my life.’ So, I started upgrading my education.”

With no education fund or savings of any consequence, she moved to Victoria with her 4-year-old son and enrolled in UVic to study Sociology, Professional Writing and Women’s Studies.

While at UVic, she became involved in the UVic Student Society (UVSS), where she served as director of services, before becoming the chairperson.

“That two years was what changed my whole life path.”

A taste for the law

During Kinney’s time on the board in the early 2000s, the student society became embroiled in controversy. An annual audit and subsequent investigation found that the UVSS Business and Operations Manager at the time had been falsifying statements and stole money from the society, contributing to a deficit of more than $400,000.

“I was thrown into a situation that I never would’ve put myself into—dealing with lawyers and accountants. We had to fire people. We had to restructure. We had to negotiate loans with the university,” Kinney says. “Eventually our new general manager, who is still a friend of mine, said, ‘You’re going to start being the spokesperson. And I think you should think about going to law school.’”

After some consideration, Kinney applied and was accepted. However, money was tight. As a single mom without child support and faced with rising tuition costs, she considered dropping out after her first year. She says getting into subsidized family housing saved her.

Upon graduating, she took an articling position with a family lawyer in Victoria. “Up until that point I thought, ‘I'm not going into family law.’ It's too close to my own personal experiences. But I really feel family law chose me.”

After articling, Kinney joined the BC government, starting as an analyst with the social assistance legal policy department and rising to manager, before an opportunity came up working on a family law reform project.

Kinney joined the justice department team tasked with examining and modernizing family law in BC. Part of the impetus was to make the law easier to understand, using simple language and with less legalese, to move away from adversarial dynamics by encouraging dispute resolution and to recognize and adapt to the reality that family units come in different shapes and sizes from what people traditionally thought when the laws were first created.

BC’s new Family Law Act was enacted in 2013. Less than a decade later, the federal government amended its Divorce Act, incorporating principles like those found in the Family Law Act, particularly around parenting, family violence, conflict resolution and prioritizing what’s in the best interest of the child.

It remains the highlight of her career, Kinney says.

Health equity

Another focus of Kinney’s career has been her work in fertility law, which primarily deals with building families through assisted reproduction. Since it involves everything from surrogacy arrangements between straight couples, same-sex couples, even polyamorous family units, it’s an extremely nuanced area of law, which can differ from province to province and country to country, Kinney says.

“It’s really critical because you need to make sure everyone actually understands the law, understands what they’re getting into and is on the same page.”

For Kinney, family and fertility law are about health equity—about removing barriers to access the law and creating a more just playing field that reflects a wider view of society. 

Open road

Kinney has added another element to making the law more accessible to her clients.

In 2020, she moved to Iqaluit to work in the Government of Nunavut’s Department of Justice where there was a noted shortage of lawyers. As part of her work there, she travelled around Nunavut to consult on how the laws could better address family violence and support families. When Kinney left Nunavut, she solo travelled internationally and re-envisioned her career. Faced with the COVID pandemic and recognizing the challenges of accessing legal services in the North, she developed an online service model providing remote legal services. 

She’s now back in Victoria so she can be closer to her son and his family, including her young grandson. She considers herself a “digital nomad lawyer.” Although she maintains a home office, she’s just as likely to meet with clients online from her mobile headquarters—a tricked-out 2003 right-hand-drive Mitsubishi Delica van imported from Japan that she’s named “Vanna White.” 

Harkening back to her hippie days riding the rails across North America, Kinney is free to hit the road whenever she wants and see where the highway takes her.

Despite the freedom of the open road, Kinney remains busy. She’s currently leading a project with the Law Society of Nunavut to create training on family violence for frontline workers. She works as a mediator with the Northwest Territories Family Mediation Program. And through her private practice, she helps separating clients mediate creative outcomes and provides legal support for intentional family-building. She says she also does her best to help people understand that “cohabitation agreements are sexy!”  

In addition to doing education talks around fertility law, family law and law reform, Kinney recently co-taught a Family Law course at UVic Law with her friend and fellow lawyer Christine Murray. And, fittingly, a few weeks after this interview, she and Vanna White pulled up stakes and headed for the Yukon.

 —Michael Kissinger, BEd '94

This article appears in the UVic Torch alumni magazine.

For more Torch stories, go to the UVic Torch alumni magazine page.