The U.S. Bar Exam is a high-stakes gamble for would-be lawyers, and a school’s pass rate is a rather high-stakes marker of a law school’s success in creating lawyers. In the next three or four years, the bar exam will be changing in most U.S. jurisdictions, and this creates a number of opportunities for innovation and opportunities for chaos.

Why is the exam changing? The National Conference of Bar Examiners puts it this way: “Set to debut in July 2026, the NextGen bar exam will test a broad range of foundational lawyering skills, utilizing a focused set of clearly identified . . . [more]

Is 2023 the year you start to think more clearly about the culture you are creating at your firm?

When I started my career in legal services in the late 1990’s law firm culture was something amorphous that no one quite had a handle on.

Sometimes a prospective hire would ask – what is your law firm culture? And the answers would include such things as we get together every Friday afternoon for drinks in the boardroom. We work hard and play hard.

In truth, most firms had no real sense of what their culture was all about nor why . . . [more]

This is the second of a two-part series regarding Associate churn. My earlier post focussed on the Associate. This one focuses on the law firm.

The other day, an international client of mine thinking about re-entering the Canadian marketplace asked me why there was so little loyalty in Canadian law firms these days. He was referring to the amount of lawyer churn in most law firms. I don’t believe this issue is limited to Canadian firms, but the question made me think back over my past 30+ years in law firms and how things have changed.

What’s the Value

It has been nearly six months since Chief Justice Morawetz called for an overhaul to Ontario’s Rules of Civil Procedure. One hopes that the delay in starting the process means that change will be more fundamental than a simple rewriting of the Rules. As I wrote shortly after the Chief Justice’s speech at the opening of the courts in October 2022, tinkering with the Rules will not address the access to justice crisis that has been staring us in the face for decades.

Since the changes to the Rules in 2010, cost and delay have simply increased. The principle . . . [more]

Next month’s Bencher elections at the Law Society of Ontario likely will mark a turning point in the regulation of legal services in Canada.

As you’ve probably heard, this is the first Bencher election in Canada to feature rival factions of candidates seeking office, each with political and governance views deeply hostile to the other. I have no idea what the outcome will be; but I believe the damage to the Bencher election model has already been done. One way or another, major (and overdue) changes are coming to the governance of Canadian legal regulators.

The sight of lawyers and . . . [more]

A user-centred tribunal process is a necessary condition of improved access to justice. But it is not a sufficient one. You also need the process codified in rules that ordinary people can understand.

Tribunal rules of procedure are meant to guide users through the process the tribunal has designed to resolve the disputes before it. If the tribunal has an adjudicative mandate, then the dispute often involves two parties, and the process is usually adversarial.

The conventional approach does not work for users

Although they are intended to guide users, the rules are not typically written for the parties involved . . . [more]

You can’t swing a dead cat around practice management and legal tech circles without hitting somebody talking about ChatGPT. And I know a lot of lawyers have developed a bone-deep fatigue of hearing about all things AI over the past few weeks.

I’ll admit, I am really interested in (and a bit worried about) what feels like the beginning of a sharp upward trajectory of AI’s presence in the professional lives of lawyers. Growing up watching sci fi movies in the 80s left me with a healthy concern of what will happen eventually with AI, but I also don’t think . . . [more]

What we see defines us. It behooves us to examine this – a catalogue of sight. Let us begin this exercise with one lawyer’s day.

9 hours, Modern Commercial Architecture

Sturdy wool carpets and large marble tiles. Clean white walls and cubicle panels up to a high ceiling. Black ergonomic plastic and leather chairs. Big glass windows. Recessed lights. Glass and wood veneer table, black keyboard, monitor, and mouse. Assorted pens, a Mont Blanc, and a yellow writing pad. Right-angles and geometric shapes.

5 hours, Words

Black Arial 11 to 15 point font on a white rectangular background, perfectly . . . [more]

Sam is frustrated. Having settled her big trial, she faces a pile of small tasks she is behind on. None of it is particularly challenging, but she spends hours a day surfing the net instead of getting caught up.

Chris is deadline driven. Every day runs like a fire drill of running to meet deadlines. They know they should plan to get projects started sooner but are stuck in the habit of relying on the stress of an impending deadline for motivation.

What do Sam and Chris have in common? They are both procrastinators.

Procrastination is avoiding taking action when . . . [more]

“Look to your left; look to your right. Only one of you will be here in a few years’ time.” I’m not the first Slaw columnist to be skeptical that that phrase was ever directed at first-year law students in this country. And based on my own experience, it’s nonsense: About 95% of my first-year class at Queen’s Law in 1990 graduated three years later. Getting out of law school isn’t the hard part; getting in is.

But the myth’s perniciousness points to a fundamental (and I think deeply flawed) feature of law school: its competitiveness. From Day One, . . . [more]

Artificial intelligence has been in the news since late last year when OpenAI released ChatGPT, a large language model machine learning chatbot that provide surprisingly good responses to questions. This system can write essays, draft legal documents, and produce computer code.

To get a sense of the potential, consider Canada’s citizenship test. Applicants for Canadian citizenship must pass an online multiple-choice exam with questions about Canada’s history, geography, economy, government, laws, and important symbols. The government maintains a study guide to help applicants prepare, and many organizations, including the Toronto Public Library offer online practice questions. . . . [more]

While I help law firms deal with a myriad of issues, the top focus of my consulting advice in 2022 had to be Associate churn. So, here’s a two-part post on this issue. First, I want to speak to Associates who are considering leaving their firm. Next, I’ll speak to law firms about how to create conditions that will lesson Associate temptations to leave.

Last year I wrote an article for SLAW called “When Should You Leave” to help Associates understand when it makes sense for them to move firms. But today, I want to talk about why . . . [more]