The number of substantive courses continues to drop.
The overall decrease in substantive courses may indicate that U of T Law is shifting toward a more practical, hands-on based learning model. Should this come at the expense of in-class hours?
This summer, many students received an email from the Faculty informing them that they did not meet the minimum credit requirement, myself included. As I desperately tried to find courses to add to my sparse schedule, I began wondering—where are all the upper-year courses?
Last year, Taylor Rodrigues (JD ‘24) published “Where Are All the Upper-Year Courses?”, an article (a study to be more accurate) examining the lack of “substantive” law courses at the law school. His study built on the “Illusion of Choice in Upper-Year Classes”, an article by Naomi Chernos (JD ‘25).
For the sake of science, and to substantiate my dissatisfaction with this year’s course catalogue with data, I decided to build on Rodrigues’ study.
The 2025-26 U of T Law JD admissions guide claims that students can shape their own studies with a choice of over 180 courses. However, with 82 substantive courses out of 175 course options, students may have less choice than they were led to believe.
Methodology
For consistency, the number of courses offered is taken from the annual Course Curriculum Report (CCRs) each year. I followed Rodrigues’ methodology while making some tweaks to account for changes in the curriculum.
I relied on the numbers Rodrigues pulled from the CCR archives for the period of 2013-14 to 2023-24. I added the numbers from the 2024-25 CCR as published in March of 2024 to produce an up-to-date graph.
A “course” is defined as any credit option. A “substantive course” is a course that is neither a clinic, externship, moot, nor journal; is more than one credit; is open to “pure JD students” (JD students not doing a dual degree); and has in-class hours. If a course has more than one section, only the first section is counted as a substantive course.
All substantive courses are courses, but not all courses are substantive courses.
Results
According to the 2024-2025 CCR, there are 175 courses, i.e., 175 options to fulfil your credit requirement. This includes 13 clinics, 22 externships, four journals, 23 moots, and four workshops.
The externship seminar, for which there are two options, is an extension of the externship and is only one credit, therefore it does not qualify as a substantive course.
There are five course options for directed research projects at varying credit values; however, choosing to design and conduct independent research is not equivalent to a traditional course. As well, the course does not have in-class hours. In a similar vein, supervised upper-year research papers have been excluded from the number of substantive course options because they are extensions of substantive course options.
Note that one might consider Perspectives on Private Law (LAW608H1F), taught by Professor Essert and Professor Niblett, sufficiently analogous to courses that have been categorised as substantive. However, for the sake of consistency with last year’s methodology, all one-credit courses, including Perspectives on Private Law, have been excluded from the substantive course count.
After removing these course options and applying the qualifying rules as stated in the methodology, 82 course options remain. Compared to 180, this seems bleak. 47 per cent of the total courses offered at U of T law are substantive in the sense that students attend lectures, have a structured syllabus, and complete some sort of final assessment.
Some of the courses in the CCR, such as Environmental Law, were not offered in Cognomos, and vice versa. However, the dataset remained largely unchanged.
The chart below shows the number of courses and substantive courses for 2013-14 to 2024-25 following Rodrigues and Chernos’ methodology. I used the data from Rodrigues and Chernos, and then found and added the data for 2024-25.
Discussion
82 courses may seem sufficient to fulfil the minimum requirement of 28 credits for the year. However, considering course conflicts and course requirements, students may, in reality, be quite limited to a small subset of courses in a given semester. And this isn’t accounting for the fact that students may, shockingly, care about the courses in which they enrol in a given year.
Either by coincidence or design, an even number of substantive course options are offered across both semesters—a welcome shift from the imbalance of the winter and fall semester course offerings in the 2023-24 year.
In 2023, Rodrigues observed that, “U of T Law’s claim that students can choose from over 180 courses is potentially misleading.” This stands true this year. Based on this year’s dataset, U of T Law has not offered 180 courses since 2017-18 and has never offered 180 substantive courses. So why does the Faculty continue to advertise a larger selection of courses than it actually offers?
While the number of course options has declined over the past decade, there is an even steeper declining trend of substantive courses relative to non-substantive courses. In both 2023-24 and 2024-25, the Faculty offered students 175 course options. However, in 2023-24, there were 87 substantive courses, six more compared to this year, meaning substantive courses are being replaced with non-substantive courses.
According to Students’ Law Society (SLS) President Isabel Brisson (3L), “[i]t is the Students’ Law Society’s position that there should be more substantive courses offered at the law school and bar examinable courses, such as Wills and Estates, should be offered each year.” The SLS has raised these concerns with the administration.
The overall decrease in substantive courses may indicate that U of T Law is shifting toward a more practical, hands-on based learning model. Should this come at the expense of in-class hours? For students who prefer in-class learning with papers or exams to test their learning, including students interested in a career in academia, a decrease in substantive courses may be disappointing, and even damaging to one’s career prospect. Additionally, almost every law student will write the bar, which contains questions pertaining to substantive topics, such as real estate law and labour and employment. Through substantive courses, students can learn the basic and foundational concepts of such areas—something for which a discussion-based seminar may not be suited.
On the other hand, opportunities, such as clinics and externships, offer students the chance to build relationships in the field of their choosing, allowing them to truly forge their own career path. For students interested in non-academic experiences, the law school’s shift may be well received.
But it begs the question—why can’t we have both? With such a big price tag on our education, should we not be able to eat our cake and have it too?