Section 3: Procedures, Issues, and Careers
The following diagram should make the court structure described here easier to visualize.
Pretrial
In most provinces and territories, a
pretrial conference
offers the parties a last chance to reach an
out-of-court settlement
.
In a pretrial conference, both parties informally appear with
their lawyers before a judge and go over the case, and the judge
expresses an opinion on the trial's likely outcome. Many cases are
settled at this stage without ever actually going to trial.
The Trial
You are probably a good deal more familiar with the process of the
trial itself than with the exchanging of documents and other procedures
that lead up to the trial. Almost everyone has seen many trial scenes in
on television and in movies. Of course, these trials are commonly
criminal trials and they usually reflect the American courtroom practice
rather than Canadian. They also tend to overly dramatize things.
Nevertheless, they have made North Americans reasonably familiar with
what goes on in the courtroom. For that reason you won't spend much time
going through courtroom procedures in detail.
