Presenter/s: Lynn Gaudet B.A., LLB., RCIC
Date: 22 April 2025
Time: 11 am to 2:15 pm Pacific
Location: webinar
Type: webinar and recording
Price: $75.00
CPD approval:
- CICC 3 CPD hours approved. Video recording will expire 22 April 2026. Includes 3 hours of Professionalism.
- LSBC 3 hours - 3 CPD hours approved. Video recording will expire on 31 December 2025. 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.
Session 2 – Reducing Stress in Client Relationships
The immigration environment is a stressful workplace for practitioners. Effective practitioners learn strategies to reduce stress caused by their clients’ conduct, not only for their own well-being but to prevent client complaints. RCICs cannot control disruptions due to government actions in continual program changes or ongoing platform issues. But it is possible to manage client relationships in a systematized way, relying on proper protocols rather than luck, to reduce the stresses coming from client actions. This seminar presents the concept of defensive practice as the goal, offering practical ways to manage client relationships and deal with difficult client behavior while meeting obligations in 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 attention to 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 do it properly
- When the client discharges you –avoid making it worse
- Your turn: Experiences with stressful client relations
College of Citizenship and Immigration - Essential Competency mapping
RCIC
Business Management and Leadership
4.8 Employs conflict resolution Skills to effectively manage conflict or disagreement with others.
Professionalism
6.1 Demonstrates and maintains competence in practice
6.1.2 Stays current and complies with legislation, regulation, professional standards, policies and guidelines.
Communication, Counselling and Advocacy
8.5 Manages client expectations through effective communications.
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.
While speakers and topics are confirmed at the time of publication, sometimes things happen which are beyond the control of ImmSeminars. If that happens substitutions or cancellations to speaker/s and/or topic/s may be necessary. In those cases, ImmSeminars will advise all registrants by email as soon as possible. We will also update the Imm Seminars website. We appreciate your cooperation in these cases.