Life skills and career tips for Canada's lawyers in training
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50905
students to take a legal ethics course. About half the law schools already offer such a stand-alone course on legal ethics." (The task force report states 11 of the 16 law schools over the past decade have in- stituted a compulsory course in legal eth- ics, though with various descriptions). University of Calgary law dean Alastair R. Lucas sees no difficulty in meeting the new national standard and says the fac- ulty's newly completed four-year review of its curriculum outlining what core knowledge and competencies is on target. "What we ended up with now lines up al- most completely with the list the federa- tion's task force has in its report," he says, adding there's already a compulsory eth- ics course in the school's curriculum. Lucas maintains the task force recom- mendations are really focused on ensur- ing competencies, more so than direct curriculum, as they are the ability to uti- lize the law and processes on behalf of a client. "But the competencies that have been set out are quite flexible," he says. He is also one who sees the national standard for admission to a bar admis- sion program as really one of defining the equivalency issue now surrounding foreign-trained lawyers. But, he says, it will guide new law school development, an aspect other deans agree with. However, questions remain. Will a national standard lead to cookie-cutter lawyers as law schools focus on meeting the standards and sacrificing intellectual exploration that is the hallmark of aca- demia? Lucas believes there is enough room to meet the requirements and at the same time allow students to follow special interests. "It's an issue that we were very much alive to," says Hunter, adding not all deans were enthusiastic to the impact of a standard on a univer- sity's curriculum. "A number of deans in the legal academy expressed that concern, that it not be too focused on learning the trade as learning is an in- tellectual process." As such, he says, the task force attempted to respect both the formal education processes to meet pro- fessional needs and the liberal education aspect, which encouraged students to explore and challenge the law. According to the task force's assessment, meeting the national standard require- ment would take about half of the three- year curriculum, says Hunter. "So there is lots of opportunity for non-traditional progress and the student could still meet the requirements to practise law," he says. Bobinski believes there will be "mini- mal impact" on most law students. "Al- There is complete mobility today and that requires that we rethink how the admissions and credential process is to be harmonized. — John J.L. Hunter though there are many details still to be determined regarding the implemen- tation of the standards, it is likely that the standards will result in reducing choices for a smaller group of students who might otherwise have focused on a different range of practice-related or other courses." Constance Backhouse, an LSUC bencher and law professor who sat on the Ontario law society task force charged with developing competen- cy requirements with the federation, doesn't see an impact on students en- tering law school this fall. The imple- mentation process and the law school's curriculum will determine the range of change, she says. "The people who de- veloped the new requirements stated of- ten that, by and large, the federation was only articulating what the law schools already provided and required of their law students. My assumption is that the federation has neither the interest nor the resources to micromanage the im- plementation of this program, and that the overall impact will not be substan- tial," says Backhouse. One source of dissention between the law societies and universities has been in the consultation process with deans voicing concern that it should have been better. UBC's Bobinski explains: "There is a long-standing tradition of collegial and collaborative work on these issues between the law schools and the law societies across Canada. The federation did not include the law schools as full partners in the development of its law school accreditation proposal but in- stead relied on periodic consultations with the law schools and other groups. From the law school perspective, as re- flected in submissions by the Canadian Council of Law Deans to the federation task force, this was an unfortunate de- velopment. However, various law so- cieties across Canada included in their approval of the proposed standard the requirement that the federation include representatives of the law schools in the work of the federation's implementation committee. The implementation com- mittee will provide another opportunity for collegial and collaborative work." That process has already begun. "We are pleased that the law societies have ad- opted the recommendations and we are moving on the implementation process. We are just getting that implementation committee together," says Hunter, as 11 law societies are now on side. Two deans, Mayo Moran from the University of To- ronto and the University of Alberta's Phil- ip Bryden, former dean of law at the Uni- versity of New Brunswick, have agreed to sit on the implementation committee. How the implementation will trickle down to the universities is still un- known, but the greatest change may be rooted in a section of the task force report dealing with skill development in competency versus simply learning law, Hunter maintains, referring to the report: "By articulating these skills re- quirements the task force believes that law societies would make an important statement that lawyers should not only know the law, but should have the ca- pacity and skill to use what they know and be able to serve the public." Looking at it with an eye to a national policy on admissions, Fineblit sees an- other gain: "It will give us greater cred- ibility." ■ C ANADIAN Lawyer 4STUDENTS F ALL 2010 29