Canadian Lawyer 4Students

C A N A D I A N L a w y e r 4 s t u d e n t s s p r i n g 2 0 1 4 11 work on really exciting and high-profile, complex cases. If I think about the last couple of years and the types of files that students have worked on, Bell's acquisition of Astral Media comes to mind [and] Glencore's acquisition of Xstrata. In fact, if I think back, one student last year in the articling group — in his litigation rotation — had the amazing opportunity to work on the Rasouli file, which dealt with end-of-life issues and went to the Supreme Court of Canada. But then in his business law ro- tation, he was an integral member of the team that represented Primaris REIT on the hostile takeover. at is not atypical of the average stu- dent experience at our firm in terms of the range of opportunities. I mean some of our students are certainly working on pro bono matters and leading charitable- and firm-building initiatives. Many of our students are participating on trial teams; supporting a trial team during their ar- ticles. So it really is astounding the wealth of opportunities that there are at the firm across all of our groups. I would also say that it's a really dy- namic and passionate work environment. If you're walking down the halls or you're in the boardrooms, you'll hear our law- yers engaging with each other and talking about the exciting files that they're work- ing on — whether it's complex litigation matters or sort of front-page news trans- actions. What's amazing is that our students and their insight is critical to what we do here and our lawyers encourage students to provide their valuable insight. I think the students are surprised, actually, especially during the summer, at how much their in- sight and analysis and research is valued and integral to the work we do here. ere's also very much an openness to culture and a culture of feedback and mentoring. We've invested a lot over the last number of years in the area of en- couraging lawyers to be open to providing feedback or [being] more candid about the feedback and being transparent about the feedback. What we hear from students is they really value that. at's how they improve and get better at what they do. How many articling students do you hire every year? We hire all of our articling students from our summer student group. We typically hire 18 to 20 students for our summer student program. We focus our resources on recruiting summer students that are at the beginning of their second year at law school. en we hire those students back to join us for articling. We don't conduct a separate articling recruit. at having been said, we are certainly focused on hiring the right number of summer students we need in terms of the articling program and, fur- ther, what we think we need as first year associates. I know it's challenging on our recruitment cycle and process to anticipate what the business needs will be two years out, but certainly we are mindful of that number to make sure that it is well-aligned to what our needs are down the road. What's the likelihood of being hired back? We talked earlier about our focus on mak- ing sure we have the right number of sum- mer recruits, and that it's aligned with our articling students' needs and first year associates' needs. Last year, we hired 86 per cent of our students back as first-year associates. As we continue in each year focusing on what is the right number of summer students, we want to make sure that everybody that comes on board — whether it's a summer student, articling student, or first-year student — has a full plate of work and has full potential to develop. It's important they have full op- portunities at the firm. We take time to figure out what the right number is for us and certainly try to align it with what our needs will be down the road. How do you choose which lawyers will do interviews? ere are lots of lawyers here at the firm who love working with students. So, we're always looking at selecting the lawyers who are interested in engaging with stu- dents and want to participate in recruit- ment. All of the members of our student committee in Toronto participate in re- cruitment. Out in our other offices, there are lawyers who are on recruitment com- mittees who participate. What does the training for interviewing lawyers look like? [McCarthys spends] quite a bit of time pre- paring training materials for our lawyers in terms of interview best practices — what the format or structure of an interview should be, certain questions to consider asking. We spend a significant amount of time doing training sessions. As part of the training, what we like to talk about is personal biases or implicit bias. . . . I think it's important to encourage lawyers to reflect on what their preferences are, what types of people they connect with, why they connect with some types of personalities better than others. In that process, [it's important to understand a gut reaction because then they] are open to learning about the experiences from stu- dents who might not be like them or may not be from the same background. How receptive are lawyers to understanding personal bias? What's amazing to me is I actually have been conducting the interview skills train- ing for the last four years now and I've seen our lawyers truly be open to accepting that discussion about personal biases. During the recruitment process, when they're meeting with students, they oen may feel a connection to a particular stu- dent and say, "I really like that student." But they're also saying, "Gail, I think the reason I'm connecting with the student is because we share the same hobbies or we came from the same school or they're sort of like me so I recognize that." [Lawyers trained to seek that insight recognize] they need to do, perhaps, more probing to fig- ure out whether or not [the student] actu- ally has the skills. Part of the recruitment- competencies approach is making sure that we're all focused on the appropriate skills. ere's a lot of things that are, per- haps, dominant traits that are more super- ficial, that are not necessarily predictive of success in a workplace like ours. We're all human — we all have our preferences and personal biases and I think that sometimes if you're distracted by some of the more su- perficial traits, then you don't actually get to figure out whether or not they actually have the skills that are important for our environment. ■

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