As an educator of undergraduate and post-graduate students who often contemplate a legal career, I still encourage my students to consider law school, despite the tuition burden and uncertain opportunities given changes in the legal profession.

Then I came across something curious – a Canadian Business ranking of the best jobs in Canada, with lawyers topping the list at #1.

The magazine’s methodology lists the following factors for the ranking:

• employment growth of the past 5 years (25%),
• median compensation (based on a 40-hour workweek) in 2013 (40%),
• the change in median compensation from 2007–08 to 2012–13 (10%); and,

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PERSONNES : Un centre hospitalier est autorisé, pour une période de 60 jours, à continuer de donner des soins à une femme qui se trouve dans le coma à la suite d'une surdose d'héroïne, et ce, malgré le refus exprimé par les parents de celle-ci.

We’ve been happy to take part in Slaw’s Law Student Week. As a final post, here is a sobering fact: LAWPRO stats show that 4 out of 5 lawyers will face a malpractice claim during their careers. Fortunately, there are resources to help the new lawyer mitigate the risks and help LAWPRO (or other E&O insurer outside Ontario) effectively defend you should a claim arise.

• The AvoidaClaim.com blog will give you the latest on claims and frauds and how to avoid them
• practicePRO.ca/newcalls has tips, tools and resources on how to succeed in the practice of law
• lawpro.ca/newcalls has information

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Today marks the unofficial end of the school year around here with the last exam being written this morning. It has now been several years since we have adopted exam writing via computer and it is a now the standard. With that standard there are a few changes from the traditional scribbled examinations. Firstly, faculty members far prefer marking word processed exams as they no longer have to obtain special qualifications in hieroglyphics in order to mark exams. That alone is enough of a plus in the eyes of most and it is not really necessary to extoll the virtues . . . [more]

The first rule of the privilege is: you do not talk about the privilege. In this way, the legal profession seems quite reminiscent of ‘Fight Club.’ Rather than guarding a recreational fighting ring however, the legal profession chooses to concern itself with protecting the communications of clients and their lawyers. The purpose of this obligation placed on legal professionals is to ensure that clients feel they can actively trust their lawyer, and thus be as candid as possible – which subsequently allows their lawyer to best advise them. Does this obligation truly accomplish the goal, or does it in actuality . . . [more]

At a recent talk at the University of Ottawa by Cynthia Petersen, the Law Society of Upper Canada Discrimination and Harassment Counsel, raised the idea that women who go on maternity leave are severely disadvantaged upon their return, unlike their male counterparts who take similarly long leaves for other personal or professional reasons. Are mothers or women who choose to go on maternity leave (“lawyer-mothers”) in consequence, viewed as less valuable lawyers? Like Ms. Petersen, I can readily acknowledge the immense progress in the legal profession towards gender equality. However, without sounding too severe on my own sex, I . . . [more]

On the face of it, interviewing should not be all that difficult – particularly for lawyers. As members of a profession who primarily make their living either writing or speaking, the idea that having a conversation about your interests and abilities in your own profession sounds both logical and easy.

But throw the words “job interview” into the mix and a whole new paradigm emerges. With seemingly so much at stake, job interviews take on a new meaning for people who ordinarily would not shy away from talking about the field they have chosen and the background that they bring. . . . [more]

Law schools are starting to look more like a mosaic of people from different backgrounds. Private law firms? Not so much. This is especially true when we look at the senior positions at these firms.[1] Whatever diversity we see in the entry points of these companies decreases dramatically when we look at the older cohorts.[2] The residual effects of a time when the legal profession was only governed by white males explains merely part of these concerning statistics. There exists a double glass ceiling – one for women and one for racialized minorities. The intersectionality of race and . . . [more]

My answer to the perennial question of which comes first, the chicken or the egg, is a resounding: egg. Yes, I enjoy a roast chicken, that celebratory meal, as much as the next carnivore. But I am enamoured of eggs.

So are the rest of us, if Agriculture Canada is to be believed. They tell me that the average Canadian eats a whopping fourteen dozen eggs a year in one form or another. Good for us, bad for us: the terrible science journalism in the newspapers keeps whipping back and forth on the subject; and all the while the . . . [more]

In 1983, the American Bar Association adopted the ABA Model Rules that are the basis for most of the current codes of conduct in the United States. The drafting body was known as the Kutak Commission. The Kutak Commission proposed a rule permitting, but regulating, non-lawyer ownership of law practice entities. Proposed Model Rule 5.4 would have permitted a lawyer to be “employed by an organization in which a financial interest is held or managerial authority is exercised by a non-lawyer . . . but only if the terms of the relationship provide in writing that”:

(a) There is no . . . [more]

As part of the CBA’s Reaching Equal Justice initiative, CBA just released 6 Legal Health Checks for members of the public. Similar to LAWPRO’s Annual Legal Health Check-up, these are intended to ensure people have the information and tools they need to recognize and avoid legal problems in the first place, and/or to prevent small problems from becoming bigger than they might have been.

There are 6 different health checks:

• 5 steps to legal wellness – speaks to the reasons why smaller legal problems can snowball into much larger and more complex problems, particularly for already vulnerable people

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“If you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend” is an often cited quote from Benjamin Franklin. But what does it mean? It could mean that our friends will eventually become our enemies and, thus, should not be trusted with our secrets. In contrast, it could mean that humankind has an inherent inability to keep secrets, or it could be interpreted simply as a commentary on our hardwired propensity for gossip. In any case, these interpretations have strong implications for the legal profession and, in particular, the duty of confidentiality legal professionals owe to . . . [more]