Canadian Lawyer 4Students

* What is the aboriginal articling program? It's a program that the diversity committee developed in recognition of a couple of things. One of [RBC's] values as a corporation is diversity. We believe that diversity in our people and employees is an important asset and helps to serve our customers well. The RBC General Counsel Group is also a member of Legal Leaders for Diversity. It's a group of general counsel that have decided to focus on diversity, and support diversity and inclusion in the in-house legal departments. As a result of that, we're focused on various diversity initiatives and we recognize that increasing enrolment by aboriginals and ensuring that aboriginal students from law school have opportunities in articling and elsewhere through their careers, that it was important for us start the program. So we launched the aboriginal articling program in 2011. How is the program structured? We recognize at RBC within the law group that we don't have some of the areas that a student may be interested in practising or get exposure to. For example, we don't have a family law practice, we don't have a litigation practice where students are actually going into and gaining some courtroom experience. So to the extent that a student is interested in a practice area that we don't offer, we do partner up with external law Lucille d'souza, senior counsel in the RBC General Counsel Group & co-chairwoman of RBC's diversity committee, talks to 4Students assistant editor Heather Gardiner about the company's aboriginal articling program. firms that we use and offer the student, based on what their interests are as expressed to us, an opportunity to do a secondment with a law firm. During that secondment we still continue to pay their salary and they're still considered to be articling with RBC, they just go and do this secondment for a couple of months. Which law firms offer secondments? We have a number of Bay Street law firms that are willing to offer our articling student a secondment opportunity. They range — we had lots of offers by law firms that we work with closely, [including] Osler [Hoskin & Harcourt LLP], Norton Rose [Canada LLP], Fraser [Milner Casgrain LLP], [and] Gowling [Lafleur Henderson LLP]. Last year our student elected to go to Fraser and do a secondment there for two months. All the law firms were equally embracing of the program and the opportunity to work with our student, so the door's open as far as what the student would like to do and where the student would like to work. What areas within the RBc law group are available for the student to work in? We have a number of different subgroups within the RBC law group. We've got the banking group, we've got the C A N A D I A N Law yer 4 students HEaTHEr GarDInEr Q& A Articling student Casey Barnett, left, and rBC general Counsel group's Lucille D'Souza. Spring 2013 11

• Cover