Canadian Lawyer 4Students

* Q& A corporate services group that I'm in, we have a public company group, and a few others. So there are a number of different opportunities and rotations that the student can have. They are encouraged to try different work and see if they can get exposure to different areas. At the end of the day, what we'd like to ensure is that the student is getting a broad range of work, so while they might be doing research in a number of different areas, as long as they get exposure to different practice areas and they come out of it with a good insight as to what they liked, what they enjoyed doing, and maybe what they may not want to practise in the future. How does RBc choose the areas for a student's rotation? It's actually very much at the student's discretion. They indicate their interests and we explain to them what the different groups do. There's always a need for having students involved and an ability for a student to get engaged on a file and work and see how the law group interacts with the business clients. What are the in-house continuing legal education seminars that are offered to students? We have a very comprehensive continuing legal education program within the law group. We have a knowledge management lawyer who's responsible for facilitating our training and ensuring that we can fulfil our requirements for law society CLE. We offer these CLE programs on a monthly basis, if not more frequently. The student is encouraged to attend those. It can range from intellectual property matters, to enforcement of guarantees, or other Bank Act issues, for example. The student gets to participate in these just the same as every other lawyer does within the law group, and gets an opportunity to see other areas that people may practise in, and if they'd like to follow up in that area then we can provide them with an opportunity to work in there. are there a number of seminars the student is required to attend? No, there's no absolute number. We do our in-house CLE programs in conjunction with encouraging the students to participate with our law firm partners. So the law firms that we work closely with also allow the students to tag along with their student programs. Because we only have the one articling student ourselves, what we don't have is very comprehensive curriculum training that you might get at a law firm; how to write a legal opinion, [Pension Benefits Standards Act] matters, and other things that would be part of a curriculum structure that a law firm would offer. So we have partnered up with those same law firms — Fraser, Norton Rose, Osler — and they've absolutely embraced the idea of having our student attend their seminars along with their articling students. So they c asey Barnett was the first student in the RBc aboriginal articling program. she began her term in December 2011 after graduating from the university of saskatchewan college of Law. Barnett says her articling experience at RBc has been very rewarding. One of her assignments involved trusts work that directly affected aboriginal peoples. "It added a different experience because it was something that I could bring my own voice to," she says. Barnett comes from the algonquin community in the Ottawa Valley, although she grew up in toronto and eventually ended up in saskatchewan, which she says "changed the core of my personality. I got to actually spend some time with some communities and do some traditional stuff that I would've never had the opportunity to do before," she says. "My identity is kind of a process that's been going on since university. It's something that my family has just been starting to embrace and it hasn't been easy." Returning to Ontario presented a challenge since she didn't know anyone in the legal community. "this was the perfect opportunity for me," says Barnett. "after I met with Lucille [D'souza] and a couple of the other people, I decided [RBc] was the place for me." During her articles, Barnett was able to network with other lawyers and articling students through her secondment at fraser Milner casgrain LLp and various continuing legal education programs at other law firms. — Hg 12 Spring 2013 CANADIAN L a w y e r 4 students also get exposure to other law firm environments and get to network with other articling students on Bay Street. What's the biggest difference between articling in private practice and an in-house legal department? I did also practise in a law firm and when I was in law school I did a co-op law program at the University of Victoria. That was one of our opportunities to see the difference between working in a law firm and in-house. I think still to this day I'm of the belief that in a law firm you might see more sophisticated transactions sometimes — [RBC] does a fair number of complex transactions — but your role might be more discrete and less involved. [At RBC] I think you get more involved in transactional type of work. I think you also get exposure to clients more. So you understand a little bit more about why we're doing something or what we want to do. I think in a law firm, also, you get the luxury of saying, "Here are the 104 legal issues with what you're proposing and we're going to outline them all to you here in this memo that we'll put together and send to you." In an in-house legal department, your business partners don't want to see a 50-page memo or a 50-page opinion, they just want a very practical discussion and analysis that outlines the risks. So it's a little bit more practical and I'd say quicker turnaround in some aspects because you understand a bit more about the business and you need to get involved more with your business partners here. How many articling students do you hire per year? We hire one student per year. We've had one student so far, we've got another hired for May, and we tried to sync up with the rest of the articling student experience so that they graduate from law school, write their bar exams, and then start to work for us. So we're excited to have our second student start next May or June. Is the position paid and are there any other benefits? We absolutely do pay the articling student. We benchmark our salary for the student against the other law firms and in-house legal departments, so it's a very competitive salary, and we pay during the entire

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