Canadian Lawyer

December/January 2021

The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers

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www.canadianlawyermag.com 31 instructors' preferences and comfort level. Hughes says the advantage of the options is that it also offers flexibility for students dealing with other pandemic-related issues, such as children at home or sharing internet bandwidth with others. Chamberlain adds that classes are restricted to the largest classrooms or audi- toriums, and students are spaced well apart. There are safety protocols such as plexiglass barriers for instructors to stand behind and a questionnaire that students fill out each time they come to campus. Lakehead University's faculty of law offers all courses for the entire academic year with online access, with some notable exceptions for courses that benefit by being done in person, such as clinical law, with appropriate social distancing measures. The Thunder Bay, Ont. law school is also offering some in-person instruction for students who prefer to be face to face, to the extent permitted by provincial and local public health rules. "Much of that is based on student and instructor preference; that played a big role," says dean Jula Hughes. The other priority is to give first-year students a taste of the law school experience. So far, the teaching model has been successful, "considering we had to make lemonade out of lemons," Hughes says. "It shows how much creativity and just plain old hard work has made it possible for students to really have a good educational experience, despite all of the adversity." One concern the University of Calgary had, says associate dean Nickie Nikolaou, was how to ensure that exams done at home could LOOKING WEST: WHAT SCHOOLS ARE DOING Thompson Rivers University: fully online, remote delivery for fall 2020 University of British Columbia: larger classes online with selected smaller classes conducted in person University of Victoria: lectures, small groups and tutorials online, with some in-person experience in clinical program University of Saskatchewan: remote classes for fall and winter 2021 term University of Manitoba: all classes online, with some off-campus experiential and clinical activities

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