This right here. There is no good reason why articling students (and lawyers generally) are exempted from basic labour and employment protections. It is possible to give articling students experiential training while compensating them for their work.
Articling students (and lawyers generally) are exempted from basic labour and employment protections because it is in the best interest of law firms to not have those protections.
Not to mention the fact that the government employs a lot of us. The LRA exemption for lawyers was briefly lifted at one point before the government realized they didn't want to deal with a government lawyers' union and reinstated it.
Attitudes like this are a huge problem with this profession. I hope for young lawyers' sake that you aren't in a hiring position or interacting with them in litigation.
The fact that you think that it’s unprofessional to say students don’t know how to practice law really says all I need to know about you. I’ve met, and not hired, many people like over the years. Your loss, not ours. Get some help - being as bitter as you clearly are is pathetic.
Yeah that’s why American biglaw first year associates (which are equivalent in experience and knowledge to an articling student in Canada), get paid more than senior associates in Canadian biglaw do, right?
Training in a law firm should be integrated into the law school curriculum. It makes zero sense to graduate as a Juris Doctor and then spend a year as a student-at-law. The meaning of "Doctor" is teacher.
A law professor told me recently that “it’s not the law schools’ responsibility to train law students.”
I find that absurd considering the wide latitude law schools have been given to design their curriculum, and the fact the federation’s task force assigned to study law degrees in Canada justified this latitude because they felt law schools needed it to prepare students for practice.
They can do just about whatever they want with the curriculum-look at LASL-but they choose to do essentially nothing.
I was discussing with a colleague about the fact that there is almost disdain within law schools for teaching anything pragmatic, as it is considered beneath them.
In fairness, I happened to think my law school struck the right balance of theory and practice (in the form of moots).
> It makes zero sense to graduate as a Juris Doctor and then spend a year as a student-at-law. The meaning of "Doctor" is teacher.
that's because Juris "Doctor" is a bullshit title adopted to inflate the degree. it doesn't denote an actual doctorate degree. there *are* actual doctoral degrees in law, it's called a PhD/SJD.
I’m not sure why you are rolling your eyes. The MD designation is a fairly recent invention too, and for generally the same reasons. It used to be a Bachelors of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgeries). Some Commonwealth countries still use the MBBS designation.
> it's a professional doctorate
🙄
that's just marketing speak for not-actually-an-academic-terminal-degree
you do realize that both JD and MD are bachelor's... right?
a medical doctor is called a doctor not because of their degree, but because of their job
if you get a job as a doctor you can call yourself a doctor too
I'm talking about the degree, not the job. In other countries, the degree is a bachelor of medicine (not doctor of medicine or MD) but when working they are still called doctors.
> I'm talking about the degree, not the job.
> but when working they are still called doctors.
so which is it? are you talking about the degree or the job?
> In other countries, the degree is a bachelor of medicine (not doctor of medicine or MD)
we're not talking about other countries
in *this* country, an MD *is* a bachelor's degree.
my question was, do you have a problem with an MD when he says he graduated as a Doctor of Medicine? Do you try to correct him and say that actually it's a bachelor degree? If yes, then your position makes sense, because then you are applying the same standard to both professional degrees which claim to be professional "doctorate" degrees.
>do you have a problem with an MD when he says he graduated as a Doctor of Medicine?
no? just like i don't have a problem with someone saying they graduated as a Juris Doctor... that's literally the name of the degree
Actually that is incorrect. Historically medical doctors used to have to complete a thesis to graduate (in addition to clinical work) , hence the D. That requirement was eliminated in most places of the world (it may still exist in some European countries ) but they kept the D. In the UK the medical degree is an MB…
historically sure, but does the MD entitle the holder to the honorific of Dr? i haven't seen an authoritative pronouncement about that one way or the other. logically it shouldn't unless it's a historical holdover.
As far as absurd suggestions go, this is second only to getting rid of articling altogether. The law school environment cannot model the real world sufficiently to make this a viable option. It will never happen.
Agree with thus 100%. Practical training is important, but law school is longer than it needs to be. The only trick is ensuring that articling actually provides practical training.
Most (all?) big law firms require these students to article like everyone else.
You can (reasonably) argue that is simply because the firm's have a vested interest in new law schooll grads to be paid as little as possible. But that doesn't change the fact no serious market actors seem willing yet to recognize an integrated curriculum as comparable to articling training. Maybe that will change over time, but there's no good reason to believe so.
Big Law pays well (relatively-speaking) for articling, and the pay on hireback is also attractive. What the integrated placements replace is the necessity of doing sweatshop articles.
No, they don’t. No matter what law school you go to in Canada, you have to article. TMU introduced the LPP to cater to the masses of students, including all the NCA clowns, that couldn’t get articling positions.
My point was this model is not actually integrating experiential training into law school, per the original comment - it’s leaning on firms to take in students for placements, so it’s not a viable alternative to articling.
You don't think a placement in a law firm is "integrating experiential training into law school"? And firms are willing to do these short placements, it's already proven viable.
No, I don’t. It’s only viable because there are so few of them. It wouldn’t be viable if every law school had to do it. Firms also wouldn’t want it in lieu of articling positions because multiple 15 week placements are grossly inefficient for their purposes of properly training their next batch of lawyers.
You may be surprised to learn that people with an MD can not practice independently despite where ‘Doctor’ part of their title. Requires minimum 2 years of extra training in residency ….
There’s a bit of a spectrum to both, but I think the worst articling experience possible (being turned into a coffee fetcher or something, and not being paid at all) is both more useless and predatory than law school can be.
Try being a coffee fetcher, not getting paid, AND facing abuse, discrimination and harassment. Now THAT’S “the worst articling experience possible.” Ask me how I know.
The only people complaining about articling are NCA students and others that applied everywhere but didn’t make the cut and they need up stuck at some garbage firm or doing LPP and then not being able to find a real job.
Only the US doesn’t have some sort of training system, I believe. And I sure as hell wouldn’t model anything on their system. As far as I know the UK and other Commonwealth realms have training contracts which are actually longer than articling.
A good articling term is essential to developing practical skills early in your career. Graduating law school, you don’t realize how much you don’t know, and that makes people more dangerous than they realize.
Really, what’ll happen without articling is that new grads in firms will still be treated like articling clerks and paid accordingly, and a sub-tier of law graduates will go out into practice with minimal experiential training. Articling won’t disappear in practice, but we’d be letting untrained solos out into the wild. To borrow from Chuck McGill in Better Call Saul, it’s as dangerous as a chimp with a machine gun.
No, let’s not have people who aren’t lawyers yet decide on what is required to become a lawyer is an appallingly stupid suggestion, even by the low standards of this sub.
Are American trained lawyers substantially worse than Canadian lawyers?
If the argument is no, because they have a harder bar exam than Canadians, then ok — make the bar exam harder and abolish articling. Simple.
I'd submit the bottom 40% of American lawyers are much worse than the bottom 40% of Canadian lawyers.
The US have plenty law schools you can get into with around a 140 LSAT and C undergrad GPA. Then those grads can barely pass law school and then go and practice in states that have easy bar exams, without any practical training. That's not an ideal situation.
Can't those same lawyers just do a bs year long masters (which many do in Canada anyways) in most states and then write the bar with no articling required?
There are still more steps in Canada for foreign trained lawyers. Plus the US probably has worse law schools than at least the UK and Australia.
> And I sure as hell wouldn’t model anything on their system.
Why not?
> As far as I know the UK and other Commonwealth countries have training contracts which are actually longer than articling.
Yeah and law is an undergraduate degree there, rather than a second-entry degree like it is in Canada and the US.
Canada requires four years of undergrad, three years of law school, and one year of articling to be a lawyer. 8 years. It takes more time and money to become a lawyer in Canada than it does in most other jurisdictions.
Where is the evidence that this time leads to substantially better lawyers than in other jurisdictions (such as the US, or the UK)?
The UK requires three years of undergrad, a year of the GDL (if you didn’t study law in undergrad), a year of the LPC, and a two year TC to become a solicitor (similar timeline for barrister). So 6-7 years, depending on whether you studied law in undergrad or not. Not that far off from Canada.
6 years (3 yrs law undergrad, 1 year LPC, 2 year TC) is a pretty big difference from 8 years lol. Like a 25% difference. Could get a whole new masters in that time. Or make about $140k extra over those two years (assuming an lawyer salary of even just $70k/year).
It’s worse when extra debt from the extra schooling is factored in.
Yes, but 50% of lawyers in the UK didn’t study law as an undergrad, so half of them take at least 7 years. Also, the 6/7 year study limits you to only solicitor or barrister - you can’t switch or do both, whereas you can with the Canadian experience (as someone who had a hybrid practice this is relevant to me). If you change your mind and want to do litigation, you have to do pupillage (12 months). So to be able to practice as a solicitor and barrister in the UK, you have to spend 8 years training, same as Canada.
To be able to practice as a solicitor and barrister in the UK, you have to spend 7 years training —- not 8 like in Canada. A years salary gone.
And, if you only want to be a solicitor, or only want to be a barrister, you have to spend 6 years training — not 8 like in Canada. Two years salary gone.
Yes, that’s what I stated.
But keep in mind that for 50% of the lawyers in the UK (ie those who didn’t know at the beginning of undergrad that they wanted to practice law), it will take 7 years to be a barrister OR a solicitor and 8 years to be both.
Aside from the people I went to law school with in the UK, almost every lawyer I met in the UK did not study law in undergrad (especially those in Magic Circle and Silver Circle). So it’s not uncommon for the process to take at least 7 years.
It’s possible in the UK to do it in 6 years, just like it’s possible to do it in Canada in 6 years. There are Canadian law schools that accept you after two years of undergrad study. But it’s not the norm, just like in the UK.
Canada doesn’t require four years of undergrad, but most people opt to finish their undergrad rather than dropping out for law school 3/4 of the way through.
This is pedantic. Practically, law schools will not admit you with only three years of undergrad completed (absent exceptional circumstances, or a stellar profile).
Nearly all Canadian law school graduates (notable exception of Quebec — which again, surprise — does not have worse lawyers than the ROC), have a four-year undergraduate degree.
How about you actually focus on the substance on the argument instead of getting held up in pedantry?
——
Edit: It was really grown up of you, when faced with no reasonable counterpoint, to call my arguments childish, and proceed to block me 🤣. Yeah, that totally isn’t childish and petty at all!
I feel bad for your articling students, and for your clients.
I knew of at least three people in my law class who hadn’t finished undergrad. And I know two people from my high school who went to Osgoode after three years in undergrad. They did not have special circumstances or a stellar profile (one of the friends who went to Osgoode had 79th percentile on their LSAT, but a very good GPA). It’s not as rare as you think.
This is just not true. I was an ordinary student, albeit with good grades, and was accepted to a great law school with three years experience. People just don’t do it. I didn’t poll my classmates but I know several others in similar positions
Law schools will admit people who skip out on their last year of undergrad. Most people take the “I’ve done three years, I might as well finish it and get an extra degree” approach.
Given that you don’t know what “pedantic” means, I suggest you look it up, rather than demanding that someone engage with you on your BS childish arguments.
> Practically, law schools will not admit you with only three years of undergrad completed (absent exceptional circumstances, or a stellar profile).
this is a common misconception. just because it's rare doesn't mean it's a filter impsoed by the school. it's just uncommonly chosen (partly *because* of this very misconception).
you can read the admissions policies. for the grade component, they basically draw no distinction between 3 years vs degree except that criteria dealing with number of credits are roughly proportionately scaled (makes sense, you don't have as many credits going in, so they shouldn't exclude the same number for example).
do you?
practically it's not any harder at all since the difference is just the result of scaling to the number of years you've done. not a tougher standard.
At risk of pedantry, a JD (like a MD or DDS) is an undergraduate degree. Don’t let the D fool you. This is why LLM and PhD students in law fall under different jurisdictions than JD students in university administrative structures. As to why JDs look like assholes if they call themselves Doctor while MDs do not; that I cannot say.
> As to why JDs look like assholes if they call themselves Doctor while MDs do not; that I cannot say.
that's pretty straightforward: the profession title also happens to be "Doctor"
That’s a colonization, if you will, of a general term for specific purposes. Dentists are called doctor but they aren’t doctors in this. Chiropractors, too, which is an absolute scandal. Having a (real!) doctorate, I usually correct mere MDs when they insist on being called Dr and insist on calling me Mr.
Of all the things I did before becoming a lawyer (including undergrad degree, law degree, bar course) articling + 3 months as a summer student was by far the most helpful in preparing me for practice.
Was it always fun? No.
But the practical experience was invaluable. I appreciated having that training opportunity and knowing it was just that. I still have all the same mentorship I had back then, but having a buffer year where I could observe and practice and not directly deal with clients is something i wouldn’t change.
The problem is that there are too many law students. There is an oversupply of students compared to the availability of decent articling positions / junior lawyer positions. Getting rid of articling won’t solve this.
I don’t disagree. There are far too many law grads, which means that a not insignificant number of people have no choice but to join what I call the Shitty Articles Club. Articling needs a big reform but so do law school admissions.
Articling isn’t the fundamental problem - the Canadian legal market cannot absorb the number of new lawyers that are churned out each year. Going to law school does not entitle anyone to any form of professional success, which includes getting the articling position you want. Everyone knows what the situation is. People who must know they won’t be competitive in the market decide to go through with it anyway and when they struggle to find an articling position they complain.
In your world, where articling is “fixed” to some degree, and people who previously would have gotten a “good” articling gig and would have had to go the LPP route (NCA candidates, those at the bottom of their class at Canadian law schools etc.), what happens to those new called lawyers? The legal market doesn’t need them. Firms and good government bodies etc. neither need nor want them.
Other professional degrees like medicine and engineering, that have significant experiential training requirements in the form of residencies and EIT don’t have the same problems because the number of new grads tracks closer to what those job markets can absorb.
Articling is necessary. Law school doesn’t prepare you to be a practicing lawyer whereas articling does.
I agree with the comments that 3LOL is unnecessary and I would suggest replacing 3LOL with “placements” or “rotations”, akin to what is already in place in pharmacy or medicine (at least in my province). This way, we also wouldn’t need the articling year.
Unfortunately, the students would be paying tuition to work at this time and still not be fairly compensated (again, similar to pharmacy / medicine) but this could be more regulated (I’m not sure if the other disciplines are regulated in this sense but maybe try mirroring those disciplines). The upside, and perhaps harder aspect, would be to incorporate this articling experience into the law school program such that every student gets a position. Will enough firms / government departments agree to take on these students (them getting some money from the uni may help) and how would they decide who gets to article where? Maybe a system similar to the medicine residency matching system could work.
Anyways, those are my 2 cents and the only solution I think that would work - but even that results in the student paying to work.
None of the pro-articling arguments stand up to basic scrutiny:
1) Argument from tradition ("That's how it's always been done")
This can't be defended on a principled basis and is a logical fallacy. Tradition in the Canadian legal profession would have also excluded racial minorities, women, Jews, and LGBT people from becoming lawyers in 2024.
2) Argument from necessity ("Articling provides skills and experience so valuable that articling is itself necessary to becoming a lawyer)
If this was true, the American legal profession would be in shambles. However, this is not the case. Also, the idea that 8 months, 10 months or 12 months of articling provides you with enough experience and/or skills to then, theoretically, practise law as a solo and/or without any further guidance or training is ridiculous.
In reality, articling serves as a filtering mechanism for a profession that operates as an economic cartel. Lawyers have a vested interest in regulating and limiting the supply of labour in the legal market. The articling requirement allows them to do that.
Jordan Furlong has written extensively about this, if you want to read more: [https://www.law21.ca/lawyer-licensing/](https://www.law21.ca/lawyer-licensing/)
I don't think the articling system itself is the problem, any more than it's the concept of internships or apprenticeships in other industries. The issue is that we allow those titles to give employers exceptions to labour standards, which never makes a lick of sense no matter what you call it.
Licensing authorities have ethical obligations to protect the public from incompetent legal professionals. If the articling requirement is removed, then the bar exams of various Canadian provinces ought be less laughably easy (i.e., replace the "bar exams" with closed book exams which are more difficult and comprehensive and include skills-based assessments).
I am licensed in both USA and Canadian jurisdictions, and I found the Canadian exam process shockingly inadequate as a test of minimum competence...and minimum comprehension. However, articling sort of "makes up" for this by providing applicants the opportunity to develop their skills and substantive knowledge in a controlled and supervised environment so that the future baby lawyers of this country (hopefully) do not go on to promptly destroy the lives and livelihoods of their first clients.
So, pick your poison.
If we’re getting rid of articling (exploitative, doesn’t teach you anything) and the bar exam (poor tool to determine minimal competence) and law school (doesn’t teach you how to practice), how about we get rid of regulators, too, and just let anyone who wants to offer legal advice and services offer legal advice and services? Surely the market would sort out the actually competent from those arguing a judge doesn’t have jurisdiction because there’s gold tassels on the flag in the courtroom.
Fact is, our system may be very inefficient at weeding out the duds, it still does so such that we are shocked when we read cases involving absolutely incompetent counsel (which we then dunk on in this sub). The onus is on people rejecting the present system to come with a better one.
100% agree with you
In a system with no articling and no bar exam, anyone can become a lawyer and the profession would be immediately swarmed with corrupt people.
I’m a Lawyer from Venezuela, and that was the case. Hyper low quality universities were giving titles to EVERYONE, on mass, and it was just ridiculous seeing how corrupt or inefficient they were.
Not to say that the bar and articling are the best filters, however, when you look at how much time, money and effort takes to become a Lawyer in Canada (for example), not everyone will survive and is not a path that everyone would take thinking “I’ll make tons of money/I’ll be powerful/pretty easily”.
I’m doing all my paperwork to get the NCA assessment, and from there to get the license, I’ll take me 3 years (even though I already studied 5 years in my country) and a good amount of money 😀
So please, don’t give space to this mediocre people trying to lower the standards.
> the American legal profession would be in shambles
There are a *lot* of crappy lawyers in the US, a much higher proportion than here.
The US combats that in part with a much tougher bar exams, but I do think our better law schools and articling help.
Except we are veering into that territory with the new law schools (TMU, TRU) and all the NCA candidates who couldn’t even get into those less desirable Canadian law schools.
What aspects do you find exploitative? Not what some exploitative firms do, but the rules around it?
Those could be amemded to make the process better without scrapping what many find to be a productive period of learning.
We have the LPP to blame for like 2/3rds of that three grand.
I was among the first crop of articling students to be saddled with it, and while I articled in BigLaw and my firm paid my fees, it was (and is) incredibly unfair to the students whose firms did not.
The LSO has since released a number of committee reports concluding the LPP is substandard and it’s wildly unfair that articling students pay for it, but for some fucking reason we keep doing it.
Ya. The NCA program needs to be completely revamped - a significant number of LPP students ended up there via the NCA route after not even being able to get into Canada’s less desirable law schools. The oversupply of law students needs to be reigned in.
> Almost every biglaw firm*, midlaw firm* and government body pays this for students.
Fixed that for you. I will also note that a very large portion of students do not article in biglaw/midlaw/govt.
My principal articled in the 1960s, and he paid his principal for the privilege. Those were the truly bad old days.
Articling is better seen as an educational placement, or an additional term of law school, than anything else. A new grad is of limited utility around the office, and is reliant on senior lawyers to show them the ropes and teach them how to actually do the job.
A simple removal of ESA Exemptions would make the articling experience much better
This right here. There is no good reason why articling students (and lawyers generally) are exempted from basic labour and employment protections. It is possible to give articling students experiential training while compensating them for their work.
Articling students (and lawyers generally) are exempted from basic labour and employment protections because it is in the best interest of law firms to not have those protections.
Not to mention the fact that the government employs a lot of us. The LRA exemption for lawyers was briefly lifted at one point before the government realized they didn't want to deal with a government lawyers' union and reinstated it.
Isnt that true for most industries
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Attitudes like this are a huge problem with this profession. I hope for young lawyers' sake that you aren't in a hiring position or interacting with them in litigation.
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I feel sorry for the people who work with you. Hopefully one of them is brave enough to deal with your unprofessionalism the way you deserve.
The fact that you think that it’s unprofessional to say students don’t know how to practice law really says all I need to know about you. I’ve met, and not hired, many people like over the years. Your loss, not ours. Get some help - being as bitter as you clearly are is pathetic.
Yeah that’s why American biglaw first year associates (which are equivalent in experience and knowledge to an articling student in Canada), get paid more than senior associates in Canadian biglaw do, right?
So just 10 months of articling would hypothetically fix that?
Training in a law firm should be integrated into the law school curriculum. It makes zero sense to graduate as a Juris Doctor and then spend a year as a student-at-law. The meaning of "Doctor" is teacher.
A law professor told me recently that “it’s not the law schools’ responsibility to train law students.” I find that absurd considering the wide latitude law schools have been given to design their curriculum, and the fact the federation’s task force assigned to study law degrees in Canada justified this latitude because they felt law schools needed it to prepare students for practice. They can do just about whatever they want with the curriculum-look at LASL-but they choose to do essentially nothing.
I was discussing with a colleague about the fact that there is almost disdain within law schools for teaching anything pragmatic, as it is considered beneath them. In fairness, I happened to think my law school struck the right balance of theory and practice (in the form of moots).
> It makes zero sense to graduate as a Juris Doctor and then spend a year as a student-at-law. The meaning of "Doctor" is teacher. that's because Juris "Doctor" is a bullshit title adopted to inflate the degree. it doesn't denote an actual doctorate degree. there *are* actual doctoral degrees in law, it's called a PhD/SJD.
it's a professional doctorate like an MD. Do you think an MD is inflated?
I’m not sure why you are rolling your eyes. The MD designation is a fairly recent invention too, and for generally the same reasons. It used to be a Bachelors of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgeries). Some Commonwealth countries still use the MBBS designation.
> it's a professional doctorate 🙄 that's just marketing speak for not-actually-an-academic-terminal-degree you do realize that both JD and MD are bachelor's... right?
Nobody has an issue with the MD, why should there be an issue with the JD?
a medical doctor is called a doctor not because of their degree, but because of their job if you get a job as a doctor you can call yourself a doctor too
I'm talking about the degree, not the job. In other countries, the degree is a bachelor of medicine (not doctor of medicine or MD) but when working they are still called doctors.
> I'm talking about the degree, not the job. > but when working they are still called doctors. so which is it? are you talking about the degree or the job? > In other countries, the degree is a bachelor of medicine (not doctor of medicine or MD) we're not talking about other countries in *this* country, an MD *is* a bachelor's degree.
my question was, do you have a problem with an MD when he says he graduated as a Doctor of Medicine? Do you try to correct him and say that actually it's a bachelor degree? If yes, then your position makes sense, because then you are applying the same standard to both professional degrees which claim to be professional "doctorate" degrees.
>do you have a problem with an MD when he says he graduated as a Doctor of Medicine? no? just like i don't have a problem with someone saying they graduated as a Juris Doctor... that's literally the name of the degree
Actually that is incorrect. Historically medical doctors used to have to complete a thesis to graduate (in addition to clinical work) , hence the D. That requirement was eliminated in most places of the world (it may still exist in some European countries ) but they kept the D. In the UK the medical degree is an MB…
historically sure, but does the MD entitle the holder to the honorific of Dr? i haven't seen an authoritative pronouncement about that one way or the other. logically it shouldn't unless it's a historical holdover.
Yes. Once you have an MD, you are a doctor.
Source?
Why don’t you call yourself Doctor after your JD and see how people react.
I wouldn’t have the courage to compare a person who studied 3 years in their field with an MD.
An MD is only 4 years
As far as absurd suggestions go, this is second only to getting rid of articling altogether. The law school environment cannot model the real world sufficiently to make this a viable option. It will never happen.
TMU and Lakehead already do it this way.
Yep. Why not have two years of law school, and make the third year the “articling” year at a law firm? 3LOL is already a waste of $20-35k.
Agree with thus 100%. Practical training is important, but law school is longer than it needs to be. The only trick is ensuring that articling actually provides practical training.
This is really the answer. But how will law schools afford to pay their fancy law professors?
The LPP program hasn’t been successful, and the TMU’s program is too new to evaluate properly.
Most (all?) big law firms require these students to article like everyone else. You can (reasonably) argue that is simply because the firm's have a vested interest in new law schooll grads to be paid as little as possible. But that doesn't change the fact no serious market actors seem willing yet to recognize an integrated curriculum as comparable to articling training. Maybe that will change over time, but there's no good reason to believe so.
Big Law pays well (relatively-speaking) for articling, and the pay on hireback is also attractive. What the integrated placements replace is the necessity of doing sweatshop articles.
No, they don’t. No matter what law school you go to in Canada, you have to article. TMU introduced the LPP to cater to the masses of students, including all the NCA clowns, that couldn’t get articling positions.
LPP is a different program. TMU's law school itself has integrated experiential training which allows you to skip articling.
It’s the same program with a 15 week professional placement. The law school itself is not teaching students how to practice law.
I never said the law school itself should teach it. The placement is part of the curriculum requirement to graduate.
My point was this model is not actually integrating experiential training into law school, per the original comment - it’s leaning on firms to take in students for placements, so it’s not a viable alternative to articling.
You don't think a placement in a law firm is "integrating experiential training into law school"? And firms are willing to do these short placements, it's already proven viable.
No, I don’t. It’s only viable because there are so few of them. It wouldn’t be viable if every law school had to do it. Firms also wouldn’t want it in lieu of articling positions because multiple 15 week placements are grossly inefficient for their purposes of properly training their next batch of lawyers.
You may be surprised to learn that people with an MD can not practice independently despite where ‘Doctor’ part of their title. Requires minimum 2 years of extra training in residency ….
Between articling and law school, I'd say law school is more useless (and predatory).
I think law school is still necessary, but I can see an argument for 2 years instead of 3.
I’d also argue the standard for a Bachelor’s degree should be 3 years not 4.
Gonna upvote this a thousand times
There’s a bit of a spectrum to both, but I think the worst articling experience possible (being turned into a coffee fetcher or something, and not being paid at all) is both more useless and predatory than law school can be.
Try being a coffee fetcher, not getting paid, AND facing abuse, discrimination and harassment. Now THAT’S “the worst articling experience possible.” Ask me how I know.
The only people complaining about articling are NCA students and others that applied everywhere but didn’t make the cut and they need up stuck at some garbage firm or doing LPP and then not being able to find a real job.
Only the US doesn’t have some sort of training system, I believe. And I sure as hell wouldn’t model anything on their system. As far as I know the UK and other Commonwealth realms have training contracts which are actually longer than articling. A good articling term is essential to developing practical skills early in your career. Graduating law school, you don’t realize how much you don’t know, and that makes people more dangerous than they realize. Really, what’ll happen without articling is that new grads in firms will still be treated like articling clerks and paid accordingly, and a sub-tier of law graduates will go out into practice with minimal experiential training. Articling won’t disappear in practice, but we’d be letting untrained solos out into the wild. To borrow from Chuck McGill in Better Call Saul, it’s as dangerous as a chimp with a machine gun.
The US doesn’t for the most part, but their bar exams are notoriously more difficult than ours and require a lot of additional study.
Ok? Let’s put it to a poll. A harder bar exam versus 10 months of articling? I wonder which one the vast majority of articling students would prefer.
No, let’s not have people who aren’t lawyers yet decide on what is required to become a lawyer is an appallingly stupid suggestion, even by the low standards of this sub.
Are American trained lawyers substantially worse than Canadian lawyers? If the argument is no, because they have a harder bar exam than Canadians, then ok — make the bar exam harder and abolish articling. Simple.
I'd submit the bottom 40% of American lawyers are much worse than the bottom 40% of Canadian lawyers. The US have plenty law schools you can get into with around a 140 LSAT and C undergrad GPA. Then those grads can barely pass law school and then go and practice in states that have easy bar exams, without any practical training. That's not an ideal situation.
Plenty of trash tier lawyers in Canada as a result of the NCA. Becoming a lawyer in Canada is hilariously easy compared to the U.S.
The solution then is to make the NCA exams harder (a 50% shouldn't be a pass) so it's not treated as a backdoor to entry.
Can't those same lawyers just do a bs year long masters (which many do in Canada anyways) in most states and then write the bar with no articling required? There are still more steps in Canada for foreign trained lawyers. Plus the US probably has worse law schools than at least the UK and Australia.
Cmon the US has some bad law schools but you cannot compare them to the dogshit schools in the UK or Australia.
> And I sure as hell wouldn’t model anything on their system. Why not? > As far as I know the UK and other Commonwealth countries have training contracts which are actually longer than articling. Yeah and law is an undergraduate degree there, rather than a second-entry degree like it is in Canada and the US. Canada requires four years of undergrad, three years of law school, and one year of articling to be a lawyer. 8 years. It takes more time and money to become a lawyer in Canada than it does in most other jurisdictions. Where is the evidence that this time leads to substantially better lawyers than in other jurisdictions (such as the US, or the UK)?
The UK requires three years of undergrad, a year of the GDL (if you didn’t study law in undergrad), a year of the LPC, and a two year TC to become a solicitor (similar timeline for barrister). So 6-7 years, depending on whether you studied law in undergrad or not. Not that far off from Canada.
6 years (3 yrs law undergrad, 1 year LPC, 2 year TC) is a pretty big difference from 8 years lol. Like a 25% difference. Could get a whole new masters in that time. Or make about $140k extra over those two years (assuming an lawyer salary of even just $70k/year). It’s worse when extra debt from the extra schooling is factored in.
Yes, but 50% of lawyers in the UK didn’t study law as an undergrad, so half of them take at least 7 years. Also, the 6/7 year study limits you to only solicitor or barrister - you can’t switch or do both, whereas you can with the Canadian experience (as someone who had a hybrid practice this is relevant to me). If you change your mind and want to do litigation, you have to do pupillage (12 months). So to be able to practice as a solicitor and barrister in the UK, you have to spend 8 years training, same as Canada.
To be able to practice as a solicitor and barrister in the UK, you have to spend 7 years training —- not 8 like in Canada. A years salary gone. And, if you only want to be a solicitor, or only want to be a barrister, you have to spend 6 years training — not 8 like in Canada. Two years salary gone.
Yes, that’s what I stated. But keep in mind that for 50% of the lawyers in the UK (ie those who didn’t know at the beginning of undergrad that they wanted to practice law), it will take 7 years to be a barrister OR a solicitor and 8 years to be both. Aside from the people I went to law school with in the UK, almost every lawyer I met in the UK did not study law in undergrad (especially those in Magic Circle and Silver Circle). So it’s not uncommon for the process to take at least 7 years. It’s possible in the UK to do it in 6 years, just like it’s possible to do it in Canada in 6 years. There are Canadian law schools that accept you after two years of undergrad study. But it’s not the norm, just like in the UK.
Canada doesn’t require four years of undergrad, but most people opt to finish their undergrad rather than dropping out for law school 3/4 of the way through.
This is pedantic. Practically, law schools will not admit you with only three years of undergrad completed (absent exceptional circumstances, or a stellar profile). Nearly all Canadian law school graduates (notable exception of Quebec — which again, surprise — does not have worse lawyers than the ROC), have a four-year undergraduate degree. How about you actually focus on the substance on the argument instead of getting held up in pedantry? —— Edit: It was really grown up of you, when faced with no reasonable counterpoint, to call my arguments childish, and proceed to block me 🤣. Yeah, that totally isn’t childish and petty at all! I feel bad for your articling students, and for your clients.
I knew of at least three people in my law class who hadn’t finished undergrad. And I know two people from my high school who went to Osgoode after three years in undergrad. They did not have special circumstances or a stellar profile (one of the friends who went to Osgoode had 79th percentile on their LSAT, but a very good GPA). It’s not as rare as you think.
This is just not true. I was an ordinary student, albeit with good grades, and was accepted to a great law school with three years experience. People just don’t do it. I didn’t poll my classmates but I know several others in similar positions
Law schools will admit people who skip out on their last year of undergrad. Most people take the “I’ve done three years, I might as well finish it and get an extra degree” approach. Given that you don’t know what “pedantic” means, I suggest you look it up, rather than demanding that someone engage with you on your BS childish arguments.
> Practically, law schools will not admit you with only three years of undergrad completed (absent exceptional circumstances, or a stellar profile). this is a common misconception. just because it's rare doesn't mean it's a filter impsoed by the school. it's just uncommonly chosen (partly *because* of this very misconception). you can read the admissions policies. for the grade component, they basically draw no distinction between 3 years vs degree except that criteria dealing with number of credits are roughly proportionately scaled (makes sense, you don't have as many credits going in, so they shouldn't exclude the same number for example).
Do you know what practically means?
do you? practically it's not any harder at all since the difference is just the result of scaling to the number of years you've done. not a tougher standard.
At risk of pedantry, a JD (like a MD or DDS) is an undergraduate degree. Don’t let the D fool you. This is why LLM and PhD students in law fall under different jurisdictions than JD students in university administrative structures. As to why JDs look like assholes if they call themselves Doctor while MDs do not; that I cannot say.
> As to why JDs look like assholes if they call themselves Doctor while MDs do not; that I cannot say. that's pretty straightforward: the profession title also happens to be "Doctor"
That’s a colonization, if you will, of a general term for specific purposes. Dentists are called doctor but they aren’t doctors in this. Chiropractors, too, which is an absolute scandal. Having a (real!) doctorate, I usually correct mere MDs when they insist on being called Dr and insist on calling me Mr.
> But there’s this bullshitty exploitative aspect then fix that? why throw the baby out with the bathwater
From my firms experience with 1st year lawyers - those that have articled have performed better than those who have not.
Of all the things I did before becoming a lawyer (including undergrad degree, law degree, bar course) articling + 3 months as a summer student was by far the most helpful in preparing me for practice. Was it always fun? No. But the practical experience was invaluable. I appreciated having that training opportunity and knowing it was just that. I still have all the same mentorship I had back then, but having a buffer year where I could observe and practice and not directly deal with clients is something i wouldn’t change.
The problem is not everyone has the experience you did. It’s definitely a “your mileage will vary” situation.
The problem is that there are too many law students. There is an oversupply of students compared to the availability of decent articling positions / junior lawyer positions. Getting rid of articling won’t solve this.
I don’t disagree. There are far too many law grads, which means that a not insignificant number of people have no choice but to join what I call the Shitty Articles Club. Articling needs a big reform but so do law school admissions.
Articling isn’t the fundamental problem - the Canadian legal market cannot absorb the number of new lawyers that are churned out each year. Going to law school does not entitle anyone to any form of professional success, which includes getting the articling position you want. Everyone knows what the situation is. People who must know they won’t be competitive in the market decide to go through with it anyway and when they struggle to find an articling position they complain. In your world, where articling is “fixed” to some degree, and people who previously would have gotten a “good” articling gig and would have had to go the LPP route (NCA candidates, those at the bottom of their class at Canadian law schools etc.), what happens to those new called lawyers? The legal market doesn’t need them. Firms and good government bodies etc. neither need nor want them. Other professional degrees like medicine and engineering, that have significant experiential training requirements in the form of residencies and EIT don’t have the same problems because the number of new grads tracks closer to what those job markets can absorb.
Articling is necessary. Law school doesn’t prepare you to be a practicing lawyer whereas articling does. I agree with the comments that 3LOL is unnecessary and I would suggest replacing 3LOL with “placements” or “rotations”, akin to what is already in place in pharmacy or medicine (at least in my province). This way, we also wouldn’t need the articling year. Unfortunately, the students would be paying tuition to work at this time and still not be fairly compensated (again, similar to pharmacy / medicine) but this could be more regulated (I’m not sure if the other disciplines are regulated in this sense but maybe try mirroring those disciplines). The upside, and perhaps harder aspect, would be to incorporate this articling experience into the law school program such that every student gets a position. Will enough firms / government departments agree to take on these students (them getting some money from the uni may help) and how would they decide who gets to article where? Maybe a system similar to the medicine residency matching system could work. Anyways, those are my 2 cents and the only solution I think that would work - but even that results in the student paying to work.
None of the pro-articling arguments stand up to basic scrutiny: 1) Argument from tradition ("That's how it's always been done") This can't be defended on a principled basis and is a logical fallacy. Tradition in the Canadian legal profession would have also excluded racial minorities, women, Jews, and LGBT people from becoming lawyers in 2024. 2) Argument from necessity ("Articling provides skills and experience so valuable that articling is itself necessary to becoming a lawyer) If this was true, the American legal profession would be in shambles. However, this is not the case. Also, the idea that 8 months, 10 months or 12 months of articling provides you with enough experience and/or skills to then, theoretically, practise law as a solo and/or without any further guidance or training is ridiculous. In reality, articling serves as a filtering mechanism for a profession that operates as an economic cartel. Lawyers have a vested interest in regulating and limiting the supply of labour in the legal market. The articling requirement allows them to do that.
Boring
Jordan Furlong has written extensively about this, if you want to read more: [https://www.law21.ca/lawyer-licensing/](https://www.law21.ca/lawyer-licensing/)
I found articling to be an invaluable experience and challenge. It depends on the principal firm/lawyer.
I first qualified in the Uk where there is a minimum wage for articling students.
I don't think the articling system itself is the problem, any more than it's the concept of internships or apprenticeships in other industries. The issue is that we allow those titles to give employers exceptions to labour standards, which never makes a lick of sense no matter what you call it.
Licensing authorities have ethical obligations to protect the public from incompetent legal professionals. If the articling requirement is removed, then the bar exams of various Canadian provinces ought be less laughably easy (i.e., replace the "bar exams" with closed book exams which are more difficult and comprehensive and include skills-based assessments). I am licensed in both USA and Canadian jurisdictions, and I found the Canadian exam process shockingly inadequate as a test of minimum competence...and minimum comprehension. However, articling sort of "makes up" for this by providing applicants the opportunity to develop their skills and substantive knowledge in a controlled and supervised environment so that the future baby lawyers of this country (hopefully) do not go on to promptly destroy the lives and livelihoods of their first clients. So, pick your poison.
In reality though, articling isn’t a guarantee of competency 🤷. Mileage varies widely.
If we’re getting rid of articling (exploitative, doesn’t teach you anything) and the bar exam (poor tool to determine minimal competence) and law school (doesn’t teach you how to practice), how about we get rid of regulators, too, and just let anyone who wants to offer legal advice and services offer legal advice and services? Surely the market would sort out the actually competent from those arguing a judge doesn’t have jurisdiction because there’s gold tassels on the flag in the courtroom. Fact is, our system may be very inefficient at weeding out the duds, it still does so such that we are shocked when we read cases involving absolutely incompetent counsel (which we then dunk on in this sub). The onus is on people rejecting the present system to come with a better one.
100% agree with you In a system with no articling and no bar exam, anyone can become a lawyer and the profession would be immediately swarmed with corrupt people. I’m a Lawyer from Venezuela, and that was the case. Hyper low quality universities were giving titles to EVERYONE, on mass, and it was just ridiculous seeing how corrupt or inefficient they were. Not to say that the bar and articling are the best filters, however, when you look at how much time, money and effort takes to become a Lawyer in Canada (for example), not everyone will survive and is not a path that everyone would take thinking “I’ll make tons of money/I’ll be powerful/pretty easily”. I’m doing all my paperwork to get the NCA assessment, and from there to get the license, I’ll take me 3 years (even though I already studied 5 years in my country) and a good amount of money 😀 So please, don’t give space to this mediocre people trying to lower the standards.
> the American legal profession would be in shambles There are a *lot* of crappy lawyers in the US, a much higher proportion than here. The US combats that in part with a much tougher bar exams, but I do think our better law schools and articling help.
Except we are veering into that territory with the new law schools (TMU, TRU) and all the NCA candidates who couldn’t even get into those less desirable Canadian law schools.
What aspects do you find exploitative? Not what some exploitative firms do, but the rules around it? Those could be amemded to make the process better without scrapping what many find to be a productive period of learning.
Making students pay $3000 to fulfill their articling requirement sounds exploitative to me
Yes.. the fees are crazy. Piled on student debt for LS, low pay for articling and then several G more for fees.
We have the LPP to blame for like 2/3rds of that three grand. I was among the first crop of articling students to be saddled with it, and while I articled in BigLaw and my firm paid my fees, it was (and is) incredibly unfair to the students whose firms did not. The LSO has since released a number of committee reports concluding the LPP is substandard and it’s wildly unfair that articling students pay for it, but for some fucking reason we keep doing it.
Ya. The NCA program needs to be completely revamped - a significant number of LPP students ended up there via the NCA route after not even being able to get into Canada’s less desirable law schools. The oversupply of law students needs to be reigned in.
Almost every firm / government body pays this for students.
> Almost every biglaw firm*, midlaw firm* and government body pays this for students. Fixed that for you. I will also note that a very large portion of students do not article in biglaw/midlaw/govt.
Articling was no fun when I did it back in the day, but from what I hear it’s gotten a lot worse.
My principal articled in the 1960s, and he paid his principal for the privilege. Those were the truly bad old days. Articling is better seen as an educational placement, or an additional term of law school, than anything else. A new grad is of limited utility around the office, and is reliant on senior lawyers to show them the ropes and teach them how to actually do the job.
Students just complain more now. If anything, it’s easier now.
You need to article before becoming a lawyer