Students, benchers, staff discuss four options; none perfect
The articling crisis. Law school’s boogeyman: an intangible monster with which few of our graduates have to grapple. Our published statistics show that only three to seven students are still looking for articling positions, as the end of the year rolls around, while 185 have secured positions. The other dozen of you are golden children, moving on to LLMs, clerkships, or other very prestigious things that are not in my vocabulary.
Yet outside of our walls, the shortage of jobs is very real and it has forced the Law Society of Ontario (LSO) into action. Why should the rest of you care? Well, the articling crisis, and the solutions put forward by the law society, will likely affect you: either directly, through higher licensing fees, changing bar exam formats, and insurance fees for young lawyers, or indirectly, through changing roles for your juniors and a changing face of the legal profession.
The LSO is considering four options:
- No change. Articling and the Law Practice Program (LPP) will be kept as is, with licensing fees will remain the same ($4,710 + HST). Half of the licensing fees paid by each graduate currently go to fund the LPP program. Each practicing lawyer in Ontario pays $25 to $27 per year to cover the remainder of the LPP program costs.
- Enhanced protections for articling and the LPP (presumably). All articling students would have to be paid at least minimum wage and complete a practical skills exam in addition to the existing exams. Licensing fees would roughly increase by $2,000 to $2,500 per candidate.
- Elimination of articling and the LPP, replaced by an exam only format. Costs would remain the same for graduates headed to firms with more than six lawyers. For everyone else, costs would increase by about $2,000.
- Elimination of articling and mandatory completion of LPP for all law graduates. Fees for all candidates would increase by $10,000 to $12,000.
You’ll notice that none of these options are perfect. None of them address the increasing numbers of law students looking for jobs. None of them increase demand for legal services. None of them address student debt—or any of the reasons we have an access-to-justice crisis. None of these options solve the articling crisis. None of them deal with the real barrier to the legal profession—cost. But they will all have some impact on your career, if you choose to practice law in Ontario.
On September 20, LSO Treasurer Malcolm Mercer, Bencher Peter Wardle, and Strategic Policy Counsel Margaret Drent came to the law school for a townhall on these proposed changes.
Mr. Mercer emphasized that the LSO exists to protect the public but has no ability to manage supply and demand in the profession. The LSO cannot dictate to law schools how many students to admit, or how much to charge students for the privilege of attending. It also cannot tell law firms to hire more students or to pay them more. It cannot tell the government to properly fund a legal aid system that serves its citizenry. And it cannot tell Canadians to stop getting law degrees overseas and coming back home with the expectation that they will be able to get licensed.
Now is the time to inform yourself, and to provide your feedback to the LSO consultation on licensing before October 26.
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