Canadian Lawyer 4Students

three years at law school mark the begin- ning of the journey of preparing profes- sionals with all three apprenticeships. "We should not leave the practical and the ethnical apprenticeships to the end — articling and the bar admission course. We should start with how we choose an enter- ing class. . . . Beginning in law schools, we need to integrate these three apprentice- ships — the cognitive, the practical, the ethical-social — as one mutually reinforc- ing continuum," he offered. "As to curriculum in law, I would in- tegrate the bar admission course with the LLB, similar to what medicine does," Johnston suggested. "I would also inter- sperse internships or articling through- out the academic years. I would pair aca- demic and practising lawyers as much as possible in the curriculum, in order to integrate the three apprenticeships." In the United States, law schools — including Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Michi- gan, and New York University — have made radical changes to their curricula in order to incorporate more learning through experience. For example, at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, every third-year course is now hands-on. In Canada, it seems that most law schools are lagging. However, might have. You start to look at issues from those different perspectives when you've seen how they play out in action. I think those are things that if you just go to law school and sit in the classroom for three years, you're just less likely to get exposed to." It also tends to be a more notable ex- perience, says Sossin. "Invariably when I ask [Osgoode graduates] about their memories of what stuck with them, it's the intensive program, it's the clinic; it's these kinds of learning experiences that also create the lasting memories. And I think those hours may have been the same as they spent on tasks, but it stays with them and is likelier to be those career-altering or perspective-altering experiences," he says. Adam Campbell, an articling student the movement is beginning. For instance, starting in the 2012 academic year, Os- goode Hall Law School will be the first Canadian law school to require students to take part in experiential learning in order to graduate. Osgoode dean Lorne Sossin advo- cates more hands-on learning in legal education. Regardless of the type of ex- periential learning, whether it's partici- pating in one of the law school's clinics or one of its various intensive programs, he says it breaks down the barriers be- tween the classroom and community, effectively creating better learning op- portunities for students. "What we're hoping is it sets our graduates up to have a real advantage that not every graduate of every law school will have," he says. "[It's] that experiential component that is very much what gives them insight into, for example, the different perspec- tives or lenses that a client might have, or a regulator might have, or the govern- ment might have, or the justice system 8 SPRING 2 0 1 2 at labour and employment law firm Har- ris & Co. LLP in Vancouver, agrees that his time at the University of Victoria En- vironmental Law Centre was his most memorable experience during law school. At the clinic, he worked on one main file related to storm water and the infrastruc- tural issues with the city's drainage system. He says his clinical work was much more inspiring than any of his classroom work, and even more beneficial than his articling term so far. "At times I actually found [the clinical work] more useful than the ar- ticling period that I'm doing right now. I had way more control over an actual file for the entire thing than I have so far while articling," he says. In an article he wrote for 4Students online, Michael Oxman points out the benefits he got from working at UVic's Business Law Clinic. "I found it useful to get feedback from lawyers as opposed to law school professors. While professors may compare work against theoretical models and research papers, practitioners are focused on how work functions in the real world. Rhetoric and purple prose are discouraged. Rather than contemplating remote hypotheticals, students are pushed to consider the practical realities of run- ning a business and the tangible concerns of business people." Campbell suggests students should have the option of completing experien- tial learning courses instead of articling, as it would add value to the student's ex- perience as well as the community. "[Law C ANADIAN Lawy er 4STUDENTS students] do all these moots and funny sit- uations like that, which are sort of make- believe, when you can do exactly the same kind of experience actually in a courtroom . . . which would give you the same experi- ence as a moot except you're actually using your skills to help somebody," he argues. In Ontario, the option of taking a practical legal training course instead of articling has recently been proposed by the Law Society of Upper Canada's arti- cling task force as a possible solution to the province's articling shortage. That op- tion, among others — including abolish- ing articling altogether — was submitted in December in the task force's report to Convocation, the society's governing council. The task force was formed to ad- dress the current articling crisis in On- tario, where there simply aren't enough articling positions available to accom- modate the vast number of law students. Statistics show that the rate of unplaced articling students increased to 12.1 per cent in 2011 from 5.8 per cent in 2008. In recent years, law schools have been in- creasing their admissions and law firms have not been accepting additional ar- ticling students, which has exacerbated the problem. Vern Krishna, a University of Ot- tawa law professor and a member of the LSUC articling task force, says it all comes down to one thing: money. Expe- riential programs tend to be very expen- sive. With articling, the law firm pays the student, while the cost of the proposed practical legal training course option would be downloaded either onto the students, the law schools, or the law soci- ety. "Before anything gets implemented, we have to face the cost consequences squarely in the eye and deal with it," he says. "There's no escaping that. Without addressing that issue, the rest is all talk because nobody is going to implement anything without a full assessment of what the costs are." The law schools can't afford addition- al experiential learning programs unless they receive more funding, says Univer- sity of Ottawa common law dean Bruce Feldthusen. "Canadian law schools are incredibly underfinanced, especially the ones out of Toronto, and as it is, we have three clinics here and they are hugely expensive. The cost per student is just

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