Canadian Lawyer

28 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 8 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m TRAINING YESTERDAY'S LAWYERS are law schools in canada pumping out lawyers without the skills they need? by scott neilson W hen asked about how Canada's legal academy is handling innovation, Jason Moyse is blunt. It is "so far behind, it thinks it's ahead," says the co-founder of Law Made, a small legal company that helps startups and large corporates "drive innovation, and make the most of technology, in the legal services industry." Toronto-based Moyse spoke to Canadian Lawyer roughly halfway through Law Made's infor- mal road show of sorts through six or seven Canadian law schools. Preaching to "anyone who turns up," the presentations focus on emerging best practices for training 21st-century lawyers. "Through our travels," says Moyse, "we have a global perspective on legal innovation and a very solid understanding of the [innovation] state of play elsewhere compared to Canada. And, frankly, I have a lot of concern in respect to the Canadian law school environment. [So far], the road show has regrettably only strengthened our concerns regarding a lack of innovation within Canadian law schools." Moyse says Canada's academy is "nowhere close to where it needs to be," innovation-wise, par- ticularly when compared to small but highly innovative U.S. law schools now offering standard courses in e-discovery, document automation, data analytics, machine learning, project manage- ment, app building, design thinking and the user experience. By contrast, "Canadian law school programs are still designed and taught the way they were 20 years ago," says Moyse. "Specifically, they are theory- rather than application-based." Echoing Moyse's concerns about law schools' failure to keep pace with change is Darrel Pink, who in January concluded 27 consecutive years at the helm of the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society, that province's regulator. Pink says innovation is more or less non-existent within the Canadian academy, which is

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