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Barbara Hicks Hicks & Hicks Professional Corp. Hanover & Brockton, Ont. three decades. Created largely due to lobbying efforts by a local community concerned about access to justice, the institution is expected to cater to students planning to practise in small B.C. communities. It will offer cur- riculum licensed from the University of Calgary's law school, with extra attention paid to challenges faced by lawyers in small towns. About 60 students are expected to gain admittance each year, with preference given to those who, during the application process, express an interest in practising in a small community. "We will have a requirement that students give a personal state- ment which includes things like what they've done in the past and what they plan to do in the future," says Chris Axworthy, the school's founding dean and a former attorney general of Saskatchewan. "We would hope to go above and behind grade point averages and LSATs to ensure that we attract students who can fulfil this particu- lar focus. . . . There's not much point in saying we want to ensure there are more lawyers in smaller communities and more aboriginal lawyers if you don't do anything about it. All law schools have preferential programs for various students, and we would do the same thing." There is optimism that Thompson Rivers will do a better job of keeping graduates on track than a compar- able effort in Nunavut. The Akitsiraq Law School started out as a one-time effort between Nunavut Arctic College and the University of Victoria to train new lawyers for the territory. While the 11 students admitted to the program received law degrees in 2005, less than half were practis- ing in the territory within three years. Law students are also being courted in Manitoba, where the province's law society hopes to coax more to practise outside of Winnipeg. Concluding that people who grew up in rural communities are more likely to practise law there, the program aims to help them afford law school in the first place. It will do so by offering for- givable loans to two students admitted to the University of Manitoba Faculty of Law for September 2011. The loans will help cover tuition and living expenses of up to $25,000 per year of law school. Forgiveness of 20 per cent for each year spent practising in an under-serviced com- munity will serve as an incentive. The initiative is one of many devised by an LSM spe- cial committee struck to target the rural access to justice problem. The group also decided the law society must find ways to make rural practice more manageable. For instance, many sole practitioners in small towns find it nearly impossible to take time away from the office, whether it's for a little rest and relaxation or a maternity leave. The latter has become a particular point of conten- tion for women who want to practise in smaller com- munities and have a family. Cutting them out of the pic- ture would create a significant roadblock for any efforts to replenish the rural bar, as women make up more than half of law school graduates. Manitoba's law society hopes to address that issue with a locum service. The society expects the program to be up and running next year. "When my colleagues tell me that practising in rural Saskatchewan is not lucrative, they couldn't be farther from the truth." — Amber Biemans, Humboldt, Sask. Manitoba is also targeting the isolation felt by some lawyers in rural communities by creating a social networking site — a Facebook for lawyers, if you will. It will allow lawyers to interact with their peers who struggle with similar practice issues but are located too far off to meet face to face. The society believes this offering will prove particularly attractive to the young- er lawyers the initiative is largely aimed at. Law Society of Manitoba CEO Allan Fineblit has some other ideas that could help further ease the shortage — everything from better access to legal institutions such as court- houses and land titles offices, to a northern law school. Those ideas are very preliminary, but in the meantime www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com NO VEMBER / DECEMBER 2010 35 Back: Ronald J. Wormsbecker, Thomas A. Schuck, D. Gregory Bobbitt. Front: Michael R. Weger and Andrew K. Svenson NSWB Law Firm Weyburn, Sask. Selwyn Hicks Hicks & Hicks Professional Corp. Hanover & Brockton, Ont.