Reducing Stress in Client Relationships by ImmSeminars

Presenter/s: Lynn Gaudet B.A., LLB., RCIC

Date: 08 May 2024

Time: 11 am to 2:15 pm Pacific

Location: webinar

Type: webinar and recording

Price: $75.00

CPD approval:

• CICC 3 hours – 3 CPD hours approved. Includes 3 hours of professionalism/Code of Professional Conduct. Video recording expires 08 May 2025.
• LSBC 3 hours – 3 CPD hours approved. Video recording will expire on 31 December 2024. Attendance to this course will provide you with 45 minutes of ethics and professional responsibility component for your BC Law Society reporting.
• Law Societies of Alberta, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Barrister’s Society of Nova Scotia
• • For members of these Law Societies, consider including this course as a CPD learning activity in your mandatory annual requirements.

This 5-part series focuses on the RCIC Code of Professional Conduct providing expert guidance for both experienced RCICs and those just starting out.   A very practical “how-to” approach is taken in each seminar to help RCICs properly fulfil all their professional duties to clients, as well as their duties to the College. All sessions will focus on common ethical pitfalls with examples, solutions and opportunities for participants to engage in resolving common issues for better practice management and preventing client complaints.

Successful practitioners must learn strategies to reduce stress caused by clients’ conduct, both for our emotional well-being to avoid burnout, and to prevent client complaints. The immigration environment is indeed a very stressful workplace for practitioners. We cannot control the disruptions due to IRCC’s continual program changes or ongoing platform issues. But we do have more control over our relationships with clients – and managing this well is a matter of proper protocols, not luck. This seminar offers practical ways to manage client relationships and deal with difficult client behavior in keeping with the tenets of the Code of Professional Conduct.

TOPICS TO BE COVERED

• Defensive practice explained: What it is, and why it’s key
• Managing stress in client relationships through specific strategies:
  • More time in proper communication (and less time fixing things)
  • Managing client expectations
  • Effective use of service agreements
  • A payment system that rewards you fairly
  • Enforcing the contract and professional boundaries
• Seven types of difficult client behavior and how to deal with them
• When to fire a client and how to it properly
• When the client discharges you – follow the steps
• Your turn: Examples of stressful client relations: How to avoid, or handle?

Speaker/s:

Lynn Gaudet B.A., LLB. RCIC

Lynn is a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC) who operated her own business as a sole practitioner in Calgary, AB for 17 years from 2004-2021, is now semi-retired in Nanaimo, BC. Her practice areas spanned a broad spectrum of immigration and refugee applications with a focus on Permanent Resident applications and criminal inadmissibility issues. She also has decades of experience in adult education – teaching, writing and developing instructional materials such as the Immigration Practitioner’s Handbook published annually by Thomson Carswell Ltd. from 2006-2012.

Lynn is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at Queens University teaching in the Graduate Program in Immigration and Citizenship Law [GDipICL]. She has taught the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Course for the Program since its inception and has also served as the Coordinating Instructor with responsibility for the curriculum.

She has a B.A. in Communications from Simon Fraser University and an LL.B. from the University of Victoria. She is a licensee in good standing of the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants (CICC) and a member of the Canadian Bar Association, National Immigration Section.