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L-7
Lakehead University has approved a law school in principal, and has sent proposals to the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and the Law Society of Upper Canada; the proposal details a small school, with 30 students to start class in 2008.
The story is in Thunder Bay’s Chronicle Journal.
Ontario already has six law schools, but none up north — though it sometimes feels that Osgoode Hall Law School’s Downsview location is in the small latitudes. LU Law would focus on aboriginal issues and offer a work/study program. There are lots of interesting questions about this proposal, just one of which is whether and how they’d attempt to keep grads up north, against the pull of big city bucks.
This is a great idea that I hope works out, for two reasons.
First, a law school that recognizes the approaching crisis in legal service delivery outside of urban centers is a small but significant step to addressing the problem before it becomes really serious. The tipping point at which the profession as a whole is ready to grapple with this is probably a ways off yet, but this is a great sign. I hope the LSUC takes especial note of this aspect of the school’s proposed charter.
Second, this would mark the first new law school in Canada in, what, 25 years? Maybe longer. At 30 students a year, this school would pose no threat to the intake volume at the established faculties, but it could offer innovative and competitive curricula that the extant faculties could be pressured to match. I’d love to see a greater degree of competition and differentiation among law schools, and I’d love to see more options for a Canadian legal education generally. With luck, Lakehead’s proposal will not only succeed, but will inspire other universities to take the plunge too.
Is the approaching crisis one of legal service delivery outside of urban centres or one of legal service delivery by people with full traditional legal educations, rather than by paralegals and the Internet – including an expanding quantity and good quality of “official” or semi-official or even private sources for online legal advice?
The high-end transaction will need full service, but the smaller client, in or outside urban centres, may want to rely on something cheaper – whether or not consciously sacrificing the depth or subtlety that a traditional legal education allows a real lawyer to offer (whether he or she does or not, in a fee-cutting pratical world.)
There is a lot of good stuff online, and the search engines are getting better and better. A specialist paralegal can probably make good use of it, as can a relatively sophisticated “client” who may not need professional help at all.
I’m not sure Lakehead will solve that problem. I wonder how one pays for a faculty competent to teach a useful spectrum of legal courses to 100 students in all, and keep them (the faculty, not the graduates) at the Lakehead once the novelty wears off.