Ontario Law Society Announces Providers of Alternative to Articling
The Law Society of Upper Canada has just now announced that Ryerson University and the University of Ottawa will provide the Society’s “Law Practice Program” of training for graduate JDs who choose not to, or are unable to, article. Ottawa will provide it in French and Ryerson in English. Unlike the University of Ottawa, Ryerson University has no law school.
As well, Ontario’s newest law school at Lakehead University will offer yet another alternative to articling, within its current JD program:
Additionally, the Law Society has approved another innovative option for fulfilling the experiential training component of its licensing requirements: the Integrated Practice Curriculum offered by Lakehead University, as part of its law degree program.
Because infographics are all the rage, the LSUC has created one to show the various routes now possible to membership in the bar:
Click on the image to enlarge.
Links to the final report of the most recent articling task force and to the very recent Report to Convocation by the Professional Development and Competence Committee can be found on the LSUC website.
I’ve been writing and re-writing this post and debating whether to be snide or just to say nothing at all, but I honestly have serious misgivings about this decision so I’m going to lay it all on the table with apologies for the long post.
For better or worse, the articling system is one way of coupling supply to demand in the legal field. As we all know, universities graduate more students than there are articling positions and firms hire more articling students than there are positions. This was an issue when I articled in 2003 and it has only gotten worse since.
On the other side, the universities are facing pressure to find new forms of revenue, leading them to increase class sizes and push to create new law schools. They clearly don’t consider the ability of the profession or the economy to absorb those additional graduates to be their problem.
So, the system as it currently stands has the universities pushing to graduate more and more law students, who have an ever-diminishing chance of finding articles and entering the profession. In the meantime, the firms scoop the cream of the crop, work them for a year to figure out which ones they want to keep, and send the rest packing. The universities get their tuition, the law society gets their bar exam and membership fees and Bay Street gets a huge supply of cheap, desperate talent. Everybody wins except for the students.
As has been said on this site and elsewhere, many figured that there would come a point where, as with the teaching profession in Ontario, prospective students would realise that law was no longer a sure ticket to riches and fame and the system would correct itself through declining enrollment.
But now the law society and the universities have found a workaround that guarantees new revenue streams for both of them. Now any disappointed graduates who can’t get an articling position can sign up for more expensive post-secondary education with the promise that they too will be allowed to pay thousands of dollars in annual fees to the law society. Where these extra lawyers will find jobs or the practical training they need to fully integrate into the profession will be entirely their own problem.
There is no question that this is going to result in a two-tiered profession. The law firms already look poorly on anyone who didn’t get hired back where they articled, how do we think they’re they going to react to graduates who didn’t get hired to article in the first place?
The law societies are supposed to be regulating the profession in the public interest. I fail to see how this benefits the public. In all honesty, if there’s a positive angle to this decision then I would welcome someone explaining it to me. I suppose there is the off-chance that flooding the market with lawyers will result in lowering the cost of legal services, but I somehow doubt that’s the intent.
Believe it, Mr. Cormier. My response.
Thank you, Mr. Morris for taking up my challenge with such enthusiasm!
Your points about access to justice are well taken. If that is indeed the intent, then I fear that a lot of people are going to be sacrificed to that goal in the short-term. At the end of your response, you make the point that “…the law societies should be doing more to support junior lawyers entering independent practice, which is the last remaining step from law school to being able to do something about access to justice.” I couldn’t agree more.
The lack of proper support to these new junior lawyers is precisely my concern. I agree with you that the access to justice issue in this country would be well addressed by the creation of hundreds of smaller firms. But I don’t think we can create that just by introducing an alternative system of entry into the profession without giving people the support, training and mentoring that allows them to create their own employment.
What I suspect is going to happen is that an unprecedentedly huge number of new lawyers are suddenly going to arrive on the scene and no one is going to know what to do with them. The traditional legal employment system won’t have the desire or capacity to hire them. They can’t all be expected to hang out their own shingles. The result is going to be a lot of bitter, underemployed lawyers leaving practice before they properly begin.
The law societies, law schools and the profession in general should absolutely be doing more to support junior lawyers entering independent practice. But by “junior” we should be talking about lawyers with a few years of real practice under their belts, not newly minted lawyers fresh out of articling or an alternative program.
Well, you’re talking with a lawyer who hung his shingle straight out of articling. Actually, I took a day job working for a municipality and spent a year getting the firm up and running before leaving the day job to run the firm full-time.
First, your concern that people are going to be sacrificed is valid. I’m hoping I’m not one of them. Some are also concerned about sacrificing bright students to the articling-associate track, and losing half of them from private practice by the time they are five years in anyway, more if you look just at women. This may be an amputation, but it’s not like the limb isn’t diseased.
The solution to the difficulty of sole practice is not to prohibit it by preventing access to the bar. It’s support.
I think you and I probably disagree on whether articling qualifies as proper support. I think we probably also disagree on whether a few years of “real practice” in a firm will prepare you, either. It’s always a risk. There are things you can do to equip yourself to be better prepared. Most of those things aren’t available in law school, in articling or in employment as a low-level associate in a large firm, which in my experience are the only sorts of firms that can afford articling students in the first place.
This new system? Yeah, that won’t do it either. What difference should that make?
For the time being, most of the things you can do to prepare lawyers for independent practice are available only through independent practice. That’s not good enough. But it’s also not a reason that we shouldn’t find some way to get around the artificial road blocks set up by the only entities in this formula financially motivated not to let people into the profession.
You don’t support junior lawyers by preventing them from existing.
Gentlemen;
If the university-driven Law Practice Program is based around a legal clinic, supervised by salaried and experienced litigation lawyers, then I agree that it has the potential to provide much better on-the-job training than sitting in a Bay Street cubicle.
Raising the access-to-justice flag is intellectually dishonest, however. The access-to-justice problem arises most significantly in family law, where the rate of unrepresented litigants is distressing and continues to spiral out of control. Many areas of practice are demanding and carry high risk to the parties involved, but inexperienced counsel practising family law can irreparably damage the lives of the children, innocent victims of their parents’ dysfunctional relationships, who are the subject of the litigation. This damage is unintentionally caused by a kind of “white knight syndrome” wherein the newly-licensed lawyer focuses only on the righteousness of his or her client’s position and loses sight of the only analysis that matters in family law, namely the “best interests of the child” test. I know, as I can look back and acknowledge having taken that approach myself in the early years of my practice.
The procedural rules governing family litigation in Ontario prohibit representation by an articling student or by any other “agent” such as a law clerk or paralegal except with leave of the Court, even for the purpose of attending to adjourn a matter or obtain a Temporary Order based on signed Minutes of Settlement. My Articling Student, whose time is billed at less than a third of the cost of my own time, cannot attend in my place to request an adjournment on consent. This is not the case for any other area of civil litigation. If we truly want to take action on access-to-justice and the rising cost of legal fees, then allowing Articling Students or law clerks to help with these types of low-risk administrative tasks is an easy way to stretch clients’ limited financial resources and provide meaningful and cost-effective legal representation while nonetheless ensuring adequate file management.
With the greatest of respect to both of you, while there may be many points in favour of alternative paths to licensing, it is ignorant to suggest that the altruistic goal of increasing cost-effectiveness in the area of litigation where the great majority of self-represented litigants find themselves – family law – is one of those points. Mr. Morris does not practice in Ontario and Mr. Cormier does not practice family law, and so both of you are forgiven. The Law Society of Upper Canada, however, is not.
This really makes one question the merits of law school if three years is not enough time for one to become “qualified” enough for admittance into their provincial law society. It may sound radical, but the third year of law school should be replaced with the licencing exams and the LPP program (no one does any work during 3L anyways). Now all law graduates would also be called to the bar. This won’t solve the problem by any means (look at the U.S.), but at least law school graduates will be able to practice once they finish school. Those who fail to be hired by a firm will have the option of opening their own shop or are be more marketable for jobs outside of law. Of course, law schools would oppose this suggestion due to the lost revenue. It is sad to see the school turn a blind eye to the current problems with the articling system and even exasperate it by increasing enrollment. I highly doubt LSUC would consider this at all. Just food for thought.