by Glenn Taylor
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Dec 05/97) - L.A. Law. Law and Order. How close do these Hollywood interpretations of courtroom life cut to the real deal?

Ask Richelle Gardener and Andrew Fox. As co-directors of Beaufort Delta Legal Services Clinic, they spend countless hours every week trapped under legal documents, piled as high as their caseloads.

The clinic sprang from a merger between the Arctic Rim Law Centre (based in Tuk and serving Beaufort communities) and Mackenzie Delta Legal Services Committee, a short-lived, Inuvik-based creature that served the Mackenzie Delta region.

The new clinic, with these two lawyers at the helm, has been servicing all nine communities in the Beaufort Delta for the past year and a half.

Gardener and Fox travel to the communities about every five or six weeks. It's a whirlwind tour, involving dozens of clients and cases. The two need to be quick on their feet, and spend long hours in between visits building cases for their clients prior to trial.

A snapshot: the clinic had 50 matters on the docket one Monday, according to Fox, a good indication of the workload.

Fox was born in Quebec, and spent a few years in school pursuing an engineering degree before he switched to philosophy. From there, the law beckoned and the lawyer hasn't looked back since.

"There's a certain satisfaction to the job now and then," said Fox. "Sometimes, you'll see a guy you helped turn a corner, and you feel you maybe had a hand in that."

Gardener was a farm girl from Seba Beach, Alta. At age six, she told her parents she wanted to be a lawyer. "I mentioned it one day, and my parents just latched onto it," said Gardener. "It became something I was supposed to be."

Gardener began her career in 1989 working as a corporate lawyer in Calgary's business towers. But the suits and ties and the "old boys' network" wasn't exactly what she had in mind.

Gardener moved to Yellowknife in 1993, and began practising in the North, before moving to Inuvik in 1995. Being a farm girl, she found the North more like home. "People are lot more down to earth," she said.

The work schedule is intense, which is perhaps a sad statement. "Mega-hours," Gardener described her job. "As things stand now, it's definitely evening and weekends... It's sort of a never-ending job."

"You're busy interviewing and jumping constantly, going all day and looking at points of law... then you regroup and get caught up in it again," said Gardener, who hasn't had a real holiday since April of 1995.

Fox goes to the gym, and sneaks an hour's sleep between trials to keep on top of his job. Like the police, he is constantly dealing with crime, and the resolution of damage already done. When you work in such an environment, "you don't have the luxury of time to really wallow in it," said Fox. "I tend to distance myself from it.

"With the client, you try to be sensitive, and you can't help but be moved," said Fox. "Some of my clients have seen some pretty tragic circumstances."