BUSINESS
CAREERS
Number of grads ‘a freight train’
heading at the profession
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Present
Continued From Page 21
“It’s a significant time commit-
ment of three years and of money
to go to law school, and we don’t
want to be in a position of admit-
ting people without a reasonable
prospect that they would have an
opportunity to secure articling
positions at the end of their law
school education.”
In 2009, UBC’s law school had
557 full-time J.D. students, but
also had 1,754 applicants for 180
first-year positions.
However, if recent trends are
any indication, those students
could face a challenge in securing articles.
“It’s taking some students
longer to find articling positions and they’re not always
getting their top pick in terms
of geography,” says Pamela Cyr,
director of career services at
UBC’s law school.
Normally, about five of the
university’s top law graduates
end up working with firms in
New York or Hong Kong—but
not this year.
In the Big Apple, where the
effects of the recent economic
downturn have been acute,
major firms there have not only
drastically reduced the number
of summer associates they take
on, some are even paying recent
grads — typically from Ivy
League law schools — as much as
US$70,000 to delay coming on
board for a year.
Most UBC law grads, however,
stay closer to home. About three-quarters of them usually secure
articling positions in Vancouver.
But it’s taking some of them a
full year to find a spot following
graduation, says Cyr, a 1999
University of Victoria law grad
who worked as a litigation law-
yer in Vancouver until joining
UBC’s law school in July 2008,
just months before the recession
hit later that fall.
2
In Ontario, a growing number
of law grads, coupled with a
steady influx of foreign-trained
lawyers — especially in Toronto —
has become “a freight train heading at the profession,” and the
scarcity of articling positions is
the “bottleneck” on that track,
says Lorne Sossin, the new dean
of Osgoode Hall Law School of
York University.
While the Law Society of Upper
Canada recently
reaffirmed the
importance of
articling as an
important part
of legal education and eligibility for admission
to the Ontario
Bar, he believes
that a profession
regulated in the public interest
should not depend solely on the
“private economic well-being of a
particular set of firms at a particular point in time.
“Though Osgoode Hall law
grads have had tremendous
success in securing articles, I
would love to see an environment where we had not just
articling but other pathways for
licensing, such as a program
where we could simulate the
articling process in a more
structured learning environment akin to a model being
pioneered in Australia. This
way, we wouldn’t be shutting
the doors to the profession on
those who couldn’t find articles,
which is especially important
where students facing cultural
or linguistic barriers may find it
even more difficult to secure
articling positions.”
Sossin
The University of Toronto’s (U
of T) law school has always
enjoyed “very high rates” of placing students in articling positions—“even through economic
bumps,” says Dean Mayo Moran.
“We have very, very few third-
year students still seeking articles
in third year.”
Still, she believes more positions
should be created—particularly in
both smaller firms and in smaller
communities —
and welcomes
the fact that the
law society is
exploring ways
to create addi-
tional spots
through job
sharing between
students-at-law
at firms.
Another solution may emerge
from a partnership between the
Ontario Bar Association’s (OBA)
Student Division Executive
(SDE) and the Law Society of
Upper Canada.
Moran
During the current academic
year, law schools from across
the province will bus in students to a session the law society will host in Toronto in November that will explore options
for articling beyond Canada’s
largest city and other major
urban areas in Ontario.
“The focus now is usually
Bay Street and opportunities
in smaller centres are often
overlooked by students,” says
2010 Queen’s University law
school grad Julia Lefebvre,
who chairs the OBA’s SDE and
who is currently articling at
Toronto-based litigation firm,
Lenczner Slaght.
She adds that the cost of
tuition ($12,159 a year for a full-time Queen’s student in 2009-
2010) and insufficient representation of students from rural and
remote areas at Ontario’s law
schools are issues that also need
to be addressed.
On the diversity front, the U of
T’s faculty of law instituted, in
May, an optional 10-month intensive program of academic courses,
workshops and short-term work
placements for about 95 internationally trained lawyers interested in practising in Ontario,
before they commence the Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s
National Committee on Accreditation licensing process.
And while the law school is
providing career support to lawyers from around the world, it’s
also helping its own students
prepare for work on a global
scale through such U of T initiatives as the International
Human Rights Program’s legal
education clinic that prepares
students to argue human rights
cases before foreign courts and
criminal tribunals.
Moran—who is also the
Ontario region representative on
the Council of Canadian Law
Deans—says interest in such
training reflects the globalization
of law—a trend that is also
present within the university’s
law school.
Of the 600 full-time students
enrolled in the U of T law
school’s 2009-2010 academic
year, 53 per cent were women
and 29 per cent reflected various minority groups.
“There’s a tremendous
amount of diversity — linguistic,
