Canadian Lawyer

30 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 "continuing to do a very good job of train- ing yesterday's lawyers." Few schools, says Pink, are commit- ted to teaching the "new law" relating to dynamic and emerging fields such as food security, genetic modification, IP, owner- ship and trade. Hearing from critics like Moyse and Pink, the attempt to bring Canada's law schools into the 21st century, with their traditions and tenured law professors, can seem like a lost cause. Enter Ontario's Ryerson University and its proposal for a new kind of law school, one more ori- ented to "practice readiness and change management" — and which trains lawyers "differently" within an "innovative and entrepreneurial" environment. Last December, Ryerson's proposal won approval from the Federation of Law Soci- eties. But before that, in November 2016, it drew a Council of Canadian Law Deans accusation of advancing only a "caricature" of Canadian academy innovation. The law deans said there was plenty of innovation at Canadian law schools and questioned whether Ryerson's proposal offered anything dramatically new. Cana- dian Lawyer spoke to several deans to find out what is actually happening at the law schools and why the pace of change is not as fast for both critics and deans alike. Ian Holloway is dean of law at the Uni- versity of Calgary, a school that in Septem- ber began the third year of its high-profile Calgary Curriculum. It sees first-year students enter via a foundational three-week boot camp-style course that aims to begin to "profession- ally acclimatize" them within a simulated 9-to-5 "office hours" environment. Other curriculum features include a compulsory course in legislation, a mandatory three- week "intensive" each January and train- ing in legal project management, lead- ership, innovation in legal services, law and technology, crisis communications, business concepts and business-related strategy and risk management. Of the business training, Holloway says the aim is to introduce students to the concept of looking at legal problems through the eyes of clients, rather than the eyes of a lawyer. Holloway, however, is quick to admit the school still has some way to go when it comes to innovation. "Data, data, data! That's what's missing from every law school curriculum I know — teaching students how to use Big Data to serve clients. We're working on it." Holloway adds that the school remains at only an "experimental" stage when it comes to offering experiential opportuni- ties beyond its six clinics. Holloway has been working with the university's Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning to attempt, among other goals, to measure the curriculum's impact. "We're [probably] going to review externally, at arm's length. We'll likely design it this year, and implement [in] 2019, so that we'll have structured feed- back from students who are [by then] articling, as well as their employers. That will be the [curriculum's] real validation." When it comes to innovation, Lorne Sossin, dean of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, says Ryer- son's challenge will be to "catch up." Law schools across the country are and have been launching initiatives in exactly the areas Ryerson "hopes to pursue," he says. In 2014, Osgoode launched its Research Digital Commons — Canada's "first open- access platform" for law school content including thought leadership. Since then, says Sossin, commons content has been downloaded almost 1.5 million times. More recently, Osgoode has hosted or participated in a modest stream of new law-related conferences and workshops. One such full-day event last November focused on blockchain and drew a capac- ity crowd of 120, says Sossin. Other recent events were titled Disruption in Legal Service Delivery: What Students and New Lawyers Need to Know; Hack Justice: An Access to Justice Hackathon; and Com- munication 2.0: Social Media Best Practic- es. The latter drew almost all of Osgoode's 300-strong first-year class. Other additions, meanwhile, include Osgoode's Learning & Leading Series of professional development programs for JD students. New courses include Legal Infor- mation Technology and Designing the Future of Justice. And, in 2017, the school's Winkler Institute received "significant" Law Foundation funding to host Design Thinking and Technology: Responding to the Justice Needs of Aboriginal Youth. Says Sossin, "The feedback [on these changes] has been really strong and posi- tive and in some cases career-altering . . . We actually will be posting some of these testimonials in the new year and hope to expand some of these activities signifi- cantly in 2018. "Innovation is not a new fad at Osgoode," he says. The school's efforts have received plenty of external recogni- tion — for example, the 2016 Clawbie for best Canadian Law Blog — and also funding, including two innovation-related grants the school recently secured from the Law Foundation of Ontario. Despite the apparent progress, how- ever, Sossin says he has plenty of work left to do when it comes to embedding innovation. "All [Canadian] law schools need more thought leadership on innovation. It's invoked by many but investigated by few." He also wants to see his school achieve "more engagement with tech literacy" and better use of technology to teach and train. So, what's stopping him? "The very aspects of innovation that are compelling are also sometimes dis- comforting," says Sossin. Aspects such as "limited time, resources and knowledge [are] always hurdles to overcome." Perhaps less nuanced regarding his school's barriers to improvement is Paul Paton of the University of Alberta's Faculty of Law in Edmonton. Says Paton, "The faculty [of law] wasn't always and still isn't always ready for

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