Life skills and career tips for Canada's lawyers in training
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50715
BY HELEN BURNETT-NICHOLS The corporate counsel bar is growing but it's not that easy for students who want to go directly into a company's law department. There are ways to prepare yourself to get there faster. Eileen Tan food retailer Loblaw Companies Ltd. last year, she knew she was in limited company. With an undergraduate degree in business, Tan says she originally got the idea to apply to law school aſt er coming across an interesting description of a corporate counsel position in a newspaper article. Her fi rst choice was to article in the corporate world in spite of the fact she knew only one classmate doing the same. "I wanted to try working, having a job, or an articling position where you're thinking about a lot of business issues. It's more up front as opposed to in private practice," she says. Although she is now working on W contract for a Loblaw subsidiary, Tan concedes that articling in-house or getting a permanent corporate counsel position aſt er articling is still a non- traditional job route for new lawyers. hen Osgoode Hall Law School graduate Eileen Tan accepted an articling position with She is keeping her options open in terms of joining a law fi rm in the future. "Even if you article in-house, I think it's pretty rare to stay on. Maybe not necessarily, but you know, to break in straight from law school is pretty diffi cult," she says. In its graduate placement statistics for 2009, Osgoode reports that four graduates ended up in-house, compared to 86 who went to multi-practice private offi ces. While he doesn't have any concrete numbers, Michael Deturbide, associate dean, academic at Dalhousie University's Schulich School of Law, estimates at most, one or two graduates per year pursue in-house positions straight out of law school. "Th e move from law school right into sort of in- house counsel is not something that we're seeing a lot of," he says. "Most companies will look for somebody who has some legal experience under their belt." Similarly, there are only a handful of articling positions that come up with corporations every year, due to the fact that in-house legal departments are oſt en small, explains Emily Orchard, director of career services at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Some companies also feel they're not able to off er articling students the well- rounded exposure they should have early in their legal careers. "We say to [students] it's not likely the case that you're going to graduate law school and head off to an in-house position. It's something that you'll have to kind of set as a goal and build towards," she says. One of the main reasons in-house is still seen as a non-traditional route for young lawyers is that many new lawyers get their on-the-job training at the law fi rm level, says Sanjeev Dhawan, president of the Ontario chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel and senior legal counsel for Hydro One Networks Inc. As a result, the usual path for those who end up in-house is to spend a few years in a law fi rm learning the ins and outs of the practice of law. "Th e C ANADIAN Lawyer 4STUDENTS F all 2011 23 * Getting to in-house SANDRA STRANGEMORE