The practical skills gained through legal education help young lawyers service the public more effectively. However, the burden of legal tuition may prevent lawyers from entering these areas of practice until they're already in mid-career, if at all.

Many undergraduate students evaluate their options after graduation, and consider doing graduate work or professional education like law school. At this point most students are already burdened with debt but are still interested in increasing their employability in the long-term.

New studies by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) explore the opportunities for graduate students in the province:

Doctoral enrolments

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Another year of classes and exams has come to an end, which puts me in a reflective frame of mind; recently a topic that has been turning over in my mind is curriculum reform, which is a hot button topic on this Blog and at many law schools across this country and North America in general. As I survey the conjecture on the topic there is one thing that I do not see addressed that bothers me and that is the topic of preparatory reading or rather the lack thereof.

As anyone who has a law degree, or is pursuing . . . [more]

As much as I enjoy discussing how technology can improve and enhance legal practice, I firmly believe this technological transition has to begin before – in the law schools. Despite, or perhaps in spite of generational differences, the vast majority of legal graduates are technologically illiterate. Changes to the way that legal education itself is delivered may make the difference.

Central to this change is the realization that lawyers are no long the gatekeepers to legal information. Access to justice demands that justice be accessible and comprehensible to the public. This may lead to further development of legal education programs . . . [more]

The Law Practice Program (LPP) is about to change the way lawyers are licensed in Ontario.

The LPP is the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC)’s solution to “the articling crisis.” It’s meant to provide an alternative to law graduates unable to secure the 10-month lawyer-in-training jobs they need to become licensed in Ontario.

The gist of the LPP is that instead of 10 months of mandatory paid work at a law firm, the LPP requires only four months of paid or unpaid work experience and four months of coursework.

Starting in the 2014-2015 licensing year, the LPP . . . [more]

We began our respective legal practices within a year after finishing our articles; we both wanted to be able to express our personal ethics and practice law our way. We had to develop new skills, ranging from file organization to client management, grapple with unforeseen stressors, and learn to congratulate ourselves for victories big and small. Our biggest surprise was that neither law school nor former employers had ever taught us the things we needed most to run our business. So to that end, and in honour of Law Student Week at slaw, here are ten facts you may also . . . [more]

I have never had the opportunity to practice my craft in a law school library having only worked as a law librarian in private firms. By the time I meet law students, they have had the benefit of learning about legal research in the academic setting. Though legal research practice in a law firm setting may operate differently than in academia, the principles of legal research are the same. Law firm librarians enjoy the fruits of the labour that takes place in law school libraries.

Recent news from the U of A Law Library was unexpected.

We regret to announce

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Nothing in the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Rules of Professional Conduct places much real pressure on the profession to incorporate equality in a meaningful way. If law schools cannot instill the true worth of equality into the minds of future lawyers, the expectation for a truly diverse Canadian legal profession becomes no more than an unrealistic pipe dream. By presenting ethical training as the sort of “easy” course students take in order to graduate, law schools may simply be creating new lawyers who are, as Professor Rosemary Cairns Way described, only “rhetorically committed” to equality.

Handbooks for equality: Hiring . . . [more]

Nobody said starting a new law school would be easy.

Lakehead University plans on opening the first new law school in Ontario in over 40 years in September 2013. The school stylizes itself as the law school "in the North for the North," and will focus on pressing issues in rural Ontario, including:

Development of this specialized curriculum has sparked controversy, before it has even started. The conflict started when the university Senate replaced a mandatory 1st-year full . . . [more]

There are many roads to enhancing access to justice across Canada and I have been fortunate to travel several of these via involvement with Manitoba organizations like Legal Aid Manitoba, Community Legal Education Association, Fort Garry Women’s Resource Centre and Legal Help Centre of Winnipeg. Government funded legal aid, public legal information and education programs, and free legal advice services are all essential routes to providing broad-based access to justice.

Another route to access to justice runs straight through our law schools. For the past several years, I have had the privilege to work with law students . . . [more]

After a visit to the Mayo Clinic, the dean of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University decided that there was a need for a “teaching hospital” for law school graduates to gain experience and learn their trade while being assisted by experienced lawyers. Thus, this summer, Arizona State is setting up a non-profit law firm for some of its graduates to work under seasoned lawyers and be paid to provide a wide range of services at relatively low cost to the residents of Phoenix.
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While the RFP process for the LSUC's Licensing Pilot Project proceeds in Ontario, Memorial University of Newfoundland is contemplating their own bid for a new law school in St. John's. Students interviewed by Heather Gardiner in Canadian Lawyer 4Students express concerns about an articling crisis developing in the Atlantic provinces.

Although I don't believe in blaming the law schools, it's worth considering this graphic by Andrew Langille, depicting Ontario law school admissions for the past 5 years:

A new law school in the Atlantic will inevitably add to the pressures of creating adequate numbers of articling positions. We also know . . . [more]

I bought my copy of John Rawls A Theory of Justice for £5 in 1972. It would have been inconceivable then that I would be watching a YouTube video of a musical version of Rawls' Theory by Eylon Aslan-Levy. Geek heaven.

Actually, the fact that a musical itself could be produced would have been inconceivable. But it's more than a musical – it describes itself as an all-singing, all-dancing romp through 2,500 years of political philosophy, by Eylon Aslan-Levy, Ramin Sabi & Tommy Peto.

In order to draw inspiration for his magnum opus, John Rawls travels back through time

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