2025 Spring (January-March)
Join law students from across Canada in CELL’s public interest environmental litigation program. Immerse yourself in active litigation with experienced legal teams. Learn how to develop and run complex files and think like a litigator. Our program will benefit any law student keen on gaining hands-on litigation experience before graduation and working for public interest clients.
About CELL
The Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation (CELL) is a national charity dedicated to advancing legal education by training and inspiring Canada’s next generation of public interest environmental litigators. Over the past eight years, 19 cohorts of students, hailing from virtually every Canadian law school, have completed our program. Learn more about CELL and its student program in our special edition May 2022 newsletter, Climbing Higher, celebrating our sixth anniversary.
Program Description
Our program gives students opportunities to develop the legal toolkit necessary to be advocates in complex litigation. Students will join a cohort from across Canada to work with our instructors and lawyers from partner law firms on a variety of public interest environmental cases.
Through weekly seminars, students will learn about litigation through a variety of active cases.
- Students gained first-hand experience learning about Canada’s only national youth-led climate lawsuit La Rose v. Canada, in which fifteen young Canadians are suing the federal government for its contribution to the climate emergency, scoring a significant victory in the Federal Court of Appeal in December 2023
- In Summer 2022, in the first environmental SLAPP suit to be litigated since the enactment of B.C.’s anti-SLAPP legislation, CELL students helped secure dismissal of a defamation lawsuit targeting a B.C. conservationist.
CELL students are supporting a precedent-setting case that seeks legal recognition of the common law riparian right to water quality in the context of a water pollution claim against a B.C. municipality.
- In 2024, an important victory was secured in the BC Court of Appeal and the matter will be heard in the B.C. Supreme Court in Spring 2025.
Here’s what recent alumni have said about the program:
“CELL was truly the most impactful experience of my first year of law school. Nothing has been more valuable than the exposure I’ve gained to active litigation and the insights behind these cases. The guest speakers were extremely inspiring, and Professor Tollefson and Mr. Ho delivered succinct lectures and facilitated interesting discussions. I am so grateful for this experience, and I look forward to following CELL’s work throughout the rest of my legal career.”
— Elizabeth Collins, Cohort 19 – Spring 2023 (uOttawa)
“CELL has been a fantastic opportunity and I can truly say that it has been a highlight of my legal education.”
— Aimee Huntington, Cohort 15 – Fall 2021 (U of Calgary)
“CELL was a formative experience during my time at law school. I developed invaluable legal skills through my exposure to ongoing cases and engagement with novel and complex legal questions. CELL also shaped my long-term career goals. I can’t recommend CELL enough.”
— Michaela Aeberhardt, Cohort 13 – Fall 2020 (UVic)
Application Process
Law students interested in being considered for admission into CELL Cohort 20 (Spring 2025) should apply to info@pacificcell.ca no later than Monday, December 30, 2024 at 4pm PST attaching the information listed here. Completion of upper year courses in environmental law and the law of evidence is an asset. Applicants must be available to attend weekly seminars held on Monday afternoons during the January-March 2025 term, between 3-5pm Pacific Time on Zoom. The first session will take place on Monday, January 13, 2025.
If you have any questions or want more information about CELL and its program, please contact Madeleine Northcote, Program Coordinator, at mnorthcote@pacificcell.ca.
Updated December 12, 2025