You can read the article on the Canadian Lawyer 4Students site or on my blog: Simon Says.

First, articling is training, often far more useful than law school. We are used to paying for training, and teachers generally expect compensation. Articling students usually don’t compensate lawyers who supervise them, but lawyers make up for it by working articling students to death. This is not true for all articling principals, but articling has a reputation for long hours. Reverse the flow of money between articling students and principals, and the relationship between them will become healthier.

Second, the third year of law school is nothing special, and many law students don’t need it. Second and third year students take courses from the same pool. Some of these courses are purely academic, and students who want to be lawyers don’t need them. After all, a general undergraduate liberal arts education should be a pre-requisite for law school admission so valuable lawyer training time is not wasted on academic subjects. Students who do not wish to be lawyers (for example, students who want to be law professors) should be able to take a third year of law school.

Third, replacing the third year of law school with an articling year will shorten the path to becoming a lawyer by exactly one year. The cost of training a lawyer to the public will be less because the less time it takes to train a lawyer, the less subsidies, grants, tax breaks, and other forms of government assistance will be required.

Fourth, it will not cost anything extra to law students because they would have paid for that year to law schools anyway. Now they will pay to the Law Society that will compensate selected lawyers. Lawyers will no doubt compete for articling principal gigs since they will make money instead of losing it. The quality of articling principals will also probably increase because their pool will widen and the Law Society will have the money to select better ones.

Fifth, the law firms who wish to snatch the “best” (whatever that means) articling students will have another form of incentive to offer in addition to higher salaries—reimbursement of articling tuition charged by the Law Society.

Sixth, the profession will get more control over lawyer training and more actual lawyers will teach future lawyers how to practice law.

Seventh, articling students will be less vulnerable as they will be paying for articling principals’ services instead of serving articling principals in exchange for wages. The Law Society will also have a greater control of working conditions and the nature of training.

Eighth, articling students will be exposed to a far broader rager of lawyers. Many fascinating lawyers doing amazing work for their clients and for the public never hire students because of the cost. If these lawyers get paid for hiring a student, more of them will probably do.

Ninth, law students who want nothing to do with law practice will have a chance to identify themselves and get better attention from law schools. Law students who do want to be lawyers will work in real lawyers’ offices instead of competing for scarce legal clinic spots in law school.

Tenth, Ontario will finally have more articling jobs, which is at the heart of the articling crisis in this province.

Pulat Yunusov is a Toronto litigation lawyer.

(Post sponsored by AdviceScene)

Finally some anonymous law student has created a comprehensive site to help potential law students in evaluating all of these different factors.

Read more about Should you go to law school on their website here.

However, that list is currently missing an important use of the internet that law students should (arguably) have access to: online lectures of law school classes (in audio, video, or both).

If law students had the option of physically attending class or virtually attending class, which do you think they would prefer? Think both. Why should law students be “falsely imprisoned” into choosing how to attend class. The real issue here is that law students should have the CHOICE of attending class either virtually or physically.

The technology to enable this important choice is prevalent throughout our society. Podcasts, YouTube videos, and even online universities have allowed online learning and education to become reality – just three clicks away – instead of three kilometres away.

But who would benefit? Many mature students have revealed to me that law school is like an insatiable hunger that ravishes their time. I would even assert that the same comment applies to traditional students straight out of university. Law school undoubtedly sprints by and the pace can approach the speed of sound; hence, online lectures would allow students (mature or traditional) to choose the pace at which they can run (or walk) through the lectures. How I wish I could pause the professors in some of my classes and press rewind! Moreover, online lectures would offer students the flexibility to “attend” class according to their preferred time. Many nocturnal students would agree. Even the law school administration would potentially benefit from admitting more students, albeit some law students currently looking for jobs would raise an eyebrow to this.

While there is a plethora of advantages and disadvantages to carving out this choice for law students, the discussion should begin to take place and not be left to future law school administrations or students to tackle.

In essence, why not allow law students the freedom to choose how they want to attend lectures (virtually or physically) and learn the curriculum in law school? Just because something has been engraved in the past for centuries, logic (appeal to tradition) dictates that old is not always gold.

The Educational Institution shall give Access Copyright, on reasonable notice, right of access through-out the Educational Institution’s premises in order to organize and carry out an audit, including full access to the Secure Network and all Course Collections.

This would include access to university email accounts.

There are a number of problems with the Access Copyright regime. First of all, every university student is presumed to be infringing copyright and this seems very unlikely given the Fair Dealing rights in the Canadian Copyright Act that expressly permit the copying of non-substantial portions of a work for the purpose of private study. As well, the university is presumed to be responsible for the presumed copyright infringement by students. This is contrary to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in CCH Canadian Limited v. Law Society of Upper Canada, [2004] 1 S.C.R. 339.CCD, which held that a library is NOT responsible for copyright infringement merely by providing access to photocopiers.

What is more troubling, though, is that by paying Access Copyright, our fair dealing rights become meaningless.

We are paying even though there is probably not much substantial copying taking place, and if this becomes the norm, fair dealing rights could be removed from the Copyright Act for the simple reason that no one behaves as if there is such a thing. Access Copyright denies flatly that they want to charge for non-substantial copying, but this does not square with the section 3 of the proposed licence agreement:

3. Subject to compliance with each of the conditions in Sections 4 and 5, this tariff entitles an Authorized Person for Authorized Purposes only, to
(a) make a Copy of up to ten per cent (10%) of a Repertoire Work;
(b) make a Copy of up to twenty per cent (20%) of a Repertoire Work only as part of a Course Collection; or
(c) make a Copy of a Repertoire Work that is

(i) an entire newspaper or periodical article or page,
(ii) a single short story, play, poem, essay or article,
(iii) an entire entry from an encyclopaedia, annotated bibliography, dictionary or similar reference work,
(iv) an entire reproduction of an artistic work (including a drawing, painting, print, photograph and    reproduction of a work of sculpture, an architectural work of art and a work of artistic craftsmanship), and
(v) one chapter, provided it is no more than twenty per cent (20%) of a book.

How else can this provision be interpreted? The university would be paying for permission to make non-substantial copies which are permitted without payment under the Copyright Act. We would be paying for our Fair Dealing rights.

Another problem is the bully-factor. This organization is not negotiating in good faith with the University, but threatening law suits instead and negotiating via an application to the Copyright Board – a rather passive-aggressive manoeuvre. By paying this organization, we are enabling it with massive financial resources and providing an enormous financial incentive to ‘discover’ new ways to ‘extort’ funds from university students … and the justifications can be based upon the results of spying on our email accounts.

The Access Copyright regimes treats scholarly works as if they were pop-songs broadcasted on the radio for a big fat profit when in fact University libraries are expensive, profitless resources for private study. The vast majority of scholarly works in these libraries are written by university professors and graduate students who aren’t looking for royalties. The main policy reason behind Fair Dealing rights is to prevent copyright law from inhibiting the intellectual development and sharing of knowledge within our society. The entire Access Copyright regime is an effort to push back against this reasoning. It is a kind of intellectual enclosure movement.

The University of Western is committed to this regime going forward. It proactively collected $15 per student last September on the assumption that the Copyright Board would ordain a fee of something less than $45 per student but substantially more than the $3.38 under the expired agreement. By doing so, UWO demonstrated its willingness to accept the surveillance, and the presumption of copyright infringement and the presumption of legal responsibility for the infringement.

The university has a choice. The licence agreement is optional and UWO can walk away from it. It would make much more sense to charge students a modest fee which would go to the libraries to implement procedures and negotiate licence agreements with publishers to ensure that students have the resources they need without exposing the University to the risk of law suits. If CCH has any force, Access Copyright is on very shaky legal ground. Quite simply, we don’t need Access Copyright.

NOTE: Access Copyright is trying to force all universities to sign on. Get informed & get involved. Join the FaceBook group ‘Fair Copyright Western’

For more information:

• The Access Copyright home page
• Access Copyright proposed licence agreement/tariff
• U of Manitoba  chooses not to renew their agreement with Access Copyright
• Canadian Library Association’s position
• UBC is saying “no” to Access Copyright

What legal scholars are saying:

• Michael Geist
• Samuel Trosow (of Western Law)
• Howard Knoff

Enjoy the reading.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Recently, the Law School Survey of Students Engagement (LSSSE) released the reports of its 2010 survey that gathered information from students of 77 Canadian and American law schools on how they felt about the quality of education they were getting.  The results of this survey reflect Professor Ferguson’s concern. About half of the students felt that they were not inadequately prepared for the practice. “Predictably perhaps, the study found that students with practical experience in clinics or pro bono work were more likely than other students to report that their law schools provided adequate professional preparation…”  Other factors that were found to have a positive impact on the overall development of students included interaction with the faculty. More specifically the report outlines that engaging in discussions with professors regarding the assignments, talking about job search activities or even talking to them through email, result into a more positive impact on the professional development of law students.

The survey also found that only a fraction of students takes advantage of the enriching opportunities available to them. “Results show that only one-third of third-year law students worked with a faculty member on a research project during their law school careers. Only 20 percent of all students frequently (“often” or “very often”) discussed ideas from readings or classes with faculty, and less than a third (29 percent) among them frequently discussed their career plans with a professor.”

The International Business Times article from which I gathered the result of the LSSSE survey seems to tie in the “under-emphasis by law schools in preparing their students” for the professional world with the difficulties faced by law school graduates in obtaining positions. It is undeniable that the onus of law schools in producing prepared law students cannot be discharged unless adequate, though perhaps competitive opportunities are provided for law students to take advantage of in building themselves up for the practice. Though it may be different in US law schools, in my experience, Western Law provides ample opportunities for its students. Hence, the need for an exclusively Canadian survey with criteria similar to LSSSE makes itself apparent.

One question that comes to mind is whether with the strong emphasis placed by the employers on law students’ transcripts, there is any time left for us to try to engage in clinical programs.  It is an uncontested fact that firms and government organizations alike look at your transcripts first and you may as well save some trees and not apply if you’ve got Cs and/or low Bs and not much legal experience. That’s when the students usually turn to gaining practical experience to add some weight to their application for positions that are not occupied by A students yet. After all if you’ve got straight As, why bother with clinics? That makes the conclusion somehow easier to draw that clinical work is usually used as a “secondary option” or an “alternative” when students feel less confident about the impression that their marks may make on the employers. Though it cant be denied that many students turn to clinics “genuinely” to gain experience, there remains the concern that due to the pressure from the job market, this option may be just used as a “plan B” by some. This no-so-genuine interest in clinical work, to my opinion, not only impacts the quality of experience gained by the students, but also the efficiency and worth of the results delivered to the clients.

Whether a mandatory clinical program in Canadian law schools will result in more prepared law students is subject to debate, though not too difficult to agree with. But in contrast to what the International Business Times article concludes, whether such programs will “enhance [law students’] professional prospects in the long run” is only more speculative.

Regardless, the results of LSSSE, unsurprisingly point out that the practical work in law school may no longer be just extracurricular to the legal education but rather essential and necessary for it.

Lately, I have been pushing hard, trying to make everything work at the firm, trying to become accredited as a mediator and arbitrator, trying to keep my publishing house on track (we just signed 3 new authors), and coping with having four children. At work , we are trying to focus our practice towards 2 or 3 areas, rather than being a general practice. It’s really paying off, especially as we forge strong relationships with business partners. We are also opening up a mediation/arbitration/coaching centre in our law office, and that is really exciting. The world is my oyster, so to speak.

However, all of this takes its toll. I went out for supper a couple weeks ago with some classmates. They seemed genuinely tired of the lawyer life. Long hours, high demands, boredom, difficulty with senior lawyers, etc. My demands are not quite the same. I do have stress, the requirement of a steep learning curve, high customer service expectations, and the challenge of keeping a full staff.

I thought I would comment on how I cope with the stress.

I work as little as possible. For me, that means a 40-50 hour work week, usually closer to the former. I learned early on in my practice that anything more for me, personally, brings with it too high a cost, to health, to mind and to my relationships. When I am at work, I try to work really hard, really fast, and really smart.

I manage my time like a freak! Every morning, I review my week’s goals (which I set out on Monday morning). I review my daily affirmations (I have 7 goals that I repeat to myself 3 times each day). I then do up my daily task list, reviewing the previous day’s list and accomplishments. I then prioritize that list. Then, I set aside some time to check and respond to emails, to return phone messages, and to get updates or update my staff. Once I am satisfied that the day is set out properly, I start to attack my list. I try to avoid interruptions, using my staff to screen calls, mail, faxes, etc. I try not to move down the list until the top priority items are completed. If I think that an item is just not going to happen, I make a note on my list, and then move on. I review the list at the end of each day (giving myself a grade out of 5), and then try to leave work at work.

I treat staff like gold, or at least the best that I can. Only my wife is more important to my success when compared to my legal assistants/paralegals. They make my world go round. I offer bonusses, flexibility, encouragement, and I share my thoughts, feelings and expectations with them as much as possible.

I do yoga. My wife is a yoga instructor, so that is a huge bonus. I attend her class once as week, and try to incorporate stretching, and some meditation throughout the week.

I sleep! Hardly ever less than 7 hours per night. More often closer to 8. I should try to get to bed earlier, but it’s hard with kids.

I exercise. At least 3 times a week, I hit the gym, strap on the running shoes, or do some other form of rigorous activity.

I practice my faith. I go to church regularly. I volunteer regularly. I read uplifting articles, books, and scriptures regularly. I read scriptures and pray with my family every day. I meditate on the larger picture often, praying at least three times each day.

I eat really well. My wife is a fantastic cook. Different members of our family have different food sensitivites or allergies, so we don’t eat much wheat, milk or sugar. My kids can’t eat sugar, so I eat less as a result. We eat a lot of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, etc. We eat few saturated fats or “other” foods. We all take our vitamins each day.

I am a very motivated person, not unlike most in the legal profession. Please don’t think that my comments above are meant to make me look like like a perfected being. I am by no means near perfection. These things have developed over time. I have failed at each of them on many occassions. However, my intention is to master these things so that I can maintain my health, my career, my sanity, and my family over the next 2-3 decades. My friends do often ask me how I accomplish so much with so many challenges and so little time. It is through this formation of habits, through an attempt towards self-mastery, that I find the energy, the drive, and the love for my life.

The above habits may be beneficial to you as you prepare for law school, as you push your way through law school, or as you establish yourself as a lawyer. I wish you the best of luck.

If there is something that you do to help you cope, please let all of us know. We can all stand to learn something new, positive and helpful.