Life skills and career tips for Canada's lawyers in training
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50905
BY JEAN SORENSEN standard Setting the By 2015, all Canadian common law schools will have to abide by national standards on skills and competency for their degrees. The process is not without its bumps. O ne of the quirky aspects of Canada's legal system is its lack of any national standard for law grads or foreign students queuing for admission to bar exam programs in any province or territory. Th e closest de facto standard was issued by the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1957 and revamped in 1969. However, not all law societies used the dated guidelines. But, by 2015, a new national standard for a common law degree developed by the Council of the Federation of Law So- cieties of Canada will aff ect law schools, law societies, and foreign-trained lawyers across Canada. It also brings a Canadian uniqueness untried in any other world ju- risdiction. Federation task force chairman John J.L. Hunter, a former president of the Law Society of British Columbia, says: "It would have been easy to simply include a list of courses. We didn't want that." Instead, the task force report, issued in October 2009, set out its standard in two sections: one outlining a gen- eral standard of legal knowledge and a second section that is more about us- ing knowledge than simply textbook learning. It deals with competency. "We wanted to stress the whole question of competency and we wanted to place an emphasis on skills," says Hunter. Th ose skills are the same that lawyers today bring to the profession, such as the abil- ity to research, analyze, and recognize legal issues, problem solve, and com- municate in one of Canada's two offi cial languages. "Th is has not been done be- fore and not been done in other coun- tries," he says, speaking of weaving these into a national standard. Hunter says the task force struggled with how to intertwine these two con- cepts of learning into one standard but, as the task force report points out, it is being leſt up to the individual law schools to gauge how it is done and many are already doing it. While a national standard may not have articulated such skills or competen- cy values, Nova Scotia Barristers' Society President Marjorie A. Hickey sees them as already existing in most Canadian law schools. "I think it is a fairly common practice of law schools to look at those skills," she says, adding such skills are honed through courses that off er moot court, practice court, practical substan- tive legal knowledge, and trial proce- dure. "I don't see a change in the way law schools will teach." Th at viewpoint is shared by University of British Columbia law dean Mary Anne Bobinski. "Th ere will be minimal impact on most law stu- dents as most students already complete coursework related to these topics." Despite Hickey and Bobinski's com- ments, there is no doubt such skill de- velopment (through courses or student legal services extended to the commu- nity) is bound to receive greater rec- ognition by law students as they move C ANADIAN Lawyer 4STUDENTS F ALL 2010 27 DARCY MUENCHRATH