RSS FeedAccess to Legal Services: Lessons from the Medical Profession (Part 2 of 3)
This is Part 2 of a three-part series on the topic of access to legal services. In Part 1, I argued that the traditional approach to ensuring access to legal services (that is, increasing the number of lawyers doing legal aid or pro bono work) is inadequate on its own. The reason for this is that there is a fundamental mismatch between the number of practising lawyers and the demand for legal services in Canada. Moreover, it is unlikely that increasing capacity in law schools will be sufficient to meet the shortfall. For these reasons, governments and lawyers need to pursue alternative strategies to ensuring access to legal services.
In today’s instalment, I want to turn my attention to the history of health professionals (particularly the emergence of professional nursing). As I will argue, the health services sector has long faced similar challenges to the legal community in terms of balancing the need to increase the availability of service without compromising quality of service. However, unlike the legal profession, the health sector has embraced a realistic and flexible strategy that has served it well for more than 100 years. The premise of this strategy is to reject the proposition that doctors are the exclusive providers of health services; instead, the health sector embraces a myriad of other health professionals including nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, and others. As I will argue, this provides an excellent template for legal services, particularly insofar as it provides for a robust model of oversight, accountability, and quality control.
The legal and medical professions have always faced similar challenges: both are self-regulating professions characterized by specialized knowledge and skill in their respective fields and also by a responsibility to the community that overrides personal interest. In the name of maintaining high standards of service and professionalism, both lawyers and doctors have found the need to be restrictive in terms of which people are admitted into the profession. In order to become a lawyer or doctor, not only must a person follow a rigorous course of academic study, but also demonstrate practical skill, moral goodness, and respect for the profession itself.
Yet despite these similarities, the medical and legal professions have diverged significantly on the point of being exclusive service providers. Lawyers have been extremely hostile toward any attempt by outsiders to provide any kind of legal service or advice, resulting in a professional monopoly. In contrast, doctors have learnt to embrace a health services sector occupied by a diverse group of different health professionals. This raises two questions that I would like to explore. First, what caused the divergence between the professions on the issue of exclusivity? Second, which model has been more successful in terms of balancing concerns of access to service with concerns of quality of service?
I believe that the answer as to why the divergence occurred comes down to two major factors. First, health services are more “natural” in the sense that even non-professionals perform health services from time to time. Second, the great wars of the early 20th century created an incentive for the state to promote an expansion in the capacity of health services.
Human being have, in one sense or another, always performed health services. Even among non-human animals, there is considerable evidence for members of a species caring for one another and tending to each other’s wounds. This fact, combined with long-held assumptions about gender essentialism, meant that even during the rise of professionalized medicine, there were always people (especially women) performing services similar to those of doctors, whether for payment or in the home. By contrast legal services derive from social constructions such as the state, the rule of law, and a system of courts to enforce legal rules. These social constructions do not exist in nature; for that reason it continues to be uncommon for non-lawyers to look after each other’s legal affairs in the same way that we look after each other’s health and well-being.
The turning point in terms of the professionalization of non-physician health providers came in the early 20th century, particularly during World Wars I and II. Because of technological advancements, these wars were unlike any other in earlier human history in the sense that combat was more frequent and prolonged. In earlier wars, there were often significant gaps in time between battles as armies moved very slowly from place to place. As a result, soldiers with relatively minor injuries had more time to heal naturally between battles. In the early 20th century, gaps between active conflict were shorter and the battles themselves often lasted longer, meaning that soldiers with relatively minor injuries had less time to heal before being pressed back into active combat.
As a result of these factors, the states engaged in warfare suddenly had an interest in increasing their capacity to deliver medical services in conflict zones. Strategically, the side that stood the best chance of winning was often the side that was best able to patch up its wounded soldiers quickly and send them back into the field. One way to accomplish this would be to increase the number of doctors serving on the front lines in conflict zones. Unfortunately, such efforts met with two roadblocks. First, there was an extremely limited number of qualified physicians and it would be impossible to train more in a timely manner. Second, it would be difficult to persuade physicians making a comfortable living at home to serve in danger zones at a lower rate of pay (the conscription option carried significant political consequences and would be considered as a last resort only).
The solution to the shortage of doctors on the front lines was to turn to women. Women were ideal candidates to perform front-line medical services for two reasons. First, social realities and assumptions about gender essentialism meant that women were considered “naturals” at caring for others including the young, the elderly, the sick, and the wounded. As such, it was believed that it would be relatively easy to train women to treat minor injuries. Second, women had very limited work opportunities in that era, meaning that they could be paid extremely low wages compared to doctors.
When the wars ended and the men returned home, many of the women who had broken into the workplace during the war remained. Despite sexism and attempts to force them back into the home, the economic reality was that women’s lower wages gave them a competitive advantage in the market. It is no coincidence, then, that the early 20th century saw more and more women entering health services, primarily as nurses, but also increasingly as doctors. Unable to prevent women’s entry into the market, the best the medical establishment could do was to regulate nursing by creating formal qualifications, clear limits on a nurse’s job responsibilities, and standards for quality and competence. Some key dates in this period of professionalization include:
- 1901, when New Zealand became the first nation to regulate nursing nationally;
- 1908, when the United States Navy Nurse Corps is established;
- 1916, when the Royal College of Nursing was established in the United Kingdom; and,
- 1919, when the United Kingdom passed the Nursing Act, which provided for registration of nurses.
Over time, the gendered hierarchy of the medical profession began to break down, as more and more women became physicians and more and more men became nurses. While there is still a significant gender disparity in both professions, the gaps continue to narrow year over year.
The two factors that I have identified in the evolution of nursing have been missing from the history of the legal profession. First, it is uncommon for non-lawyers to contemplate providing legal services in the home; for this reason, we are more likely to think that the rigorous academic studies undertaken by law students provide the only sound basis for providing legal services. Second, there has never been a war in which the outcome depended in any significant way on the number of legal service providers on the front lines. Thus, if the legal profession is to follow the example of medicine, the lawyers themselves will have to reject their roles as exclusive service providers.
The next issue that merits attention is whether the fragmentation within the health services sector has, on balance, been more successful than the monopoly in the legal profession at balancing access to service with quality of service. I argue that it has, which is not particularly surprising given the crisis facing the legal community in terms of access to service.
The fragmentation of the health service has been so successful in industrial societies that it has increased both in scope and in scale at an extraordinary rate. As of 2008, there were 16,126 active practising nurses in Manitoba compared to just 2,272 licensed physicians. These health professionals are complemented in their work by thousands of others including pharmacists, physiotherapists, technicians, and scientists.
Like other professionals, nurses are self-regulated based on a public accountability model. In Manitoba, for example, Registered Nurses (RNs) are governed by the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba, as established by the Registered Nurses Act and its subordinate regulations. The College plays a role in establishing the registration process to ensure quality and competence, establishing best practices and standards, helping nurses to meet those standards through continuing education, and enforcing rules through a disciplinary board. This structure should sound familiar to lawyers, because it mimics other self-regulating professions including law societies and colleges of physicians.
While there was initially some concern that nurses would be unable to provide the same high quality service as physicians, those concerns have largely fallen by the wayside in light of the high level of competence and professionalism demonstrated by nurses over the years. In fact, a 2004 Gallup survey revealed that a higher percentage of respondents expressed “high” or “very high” trust in nurses (79%) than in medical doctors (67%). For the sake of comparison, lawyers were among the least trusted with only 18% of respondents expressing “high” or “very high” trust.
In addition to vertical fragmentation (that is, tiers of hierarchical qualification), the health sector has also embraced horizontal fragmentation (that is, areas of specialization within each tier). In Manitoba, for example, there are several different types of nurses including registered nurses (RNs), registered psychiatric nurses (RPNs), and licensed practical nurses (LPNs). Moreover, registered nurses may obtain an extended practice or nurse practitioner designation, allowing them to offer additional services. The colleges of nurses provide detailed guidelines on the roles, responsibilities, and qualifications required of each different type of nurse, as well as disciplinary boards that enforce the standards for quality and professionalism.
This model is extremely flexible in that it simultaneously promotes both access to service and quality of service. While recognizing the need for well-defined qualifications and professional standards, it acknowledges that the completion of medical school may not be necessary in order to provide patients with certain types of services. As a result, it is easier to train and employ a larger number of nurses to complement the work of physicians and thus to increase the province’s capacity to deliver health services to the public at a lower cost than simply training and hiring more physicians.
I think that the legal profession can learn at least 3 important lessons from the evolution of nursing:
- it is possible to end professional monopolies and still maintain high quality of service, provided proper oversight and accountability measures are in place;
- a full and expensive professional education is not necessary in order to provide limited services within a well-defined area of competence; and,
- the cost of training service providers may be lower if that education is specialized rather than general in nature.
In light of these lessons, I think the conclusion to be drawn is that the lawyer monopoly must come to an end in order to meet the challenge of rising demand for legal services. By creating new forms of qualification that are less than those of a lawyer, we can create discreet new job classes that are qualified to perform a limited set of legal services.
In Part 3 of this series, I will explore some case studies that reveal that the fragmentation of the legal profession is already taking place; that is, there are already a significant number of non-lawyers performing jobs that include statutory and common law interpretation, providing legal or practical advice to clients, and even representing clients before administrative tribunals. Using these examples as a starting point, I will posit a non-exhaustive set of proposals to create new formal job designations that incorporate educational prerequisites, standards of competence, a code of professional conduct, disciplinary boards, and an accountability model that clearly delineates the limits of areas of competence of non-lawyers. Finally, I will address some possible objections to my proposals and discuss the practical realities of getting such proposals implemented in Canada.
Access to Legal Services: Lessons from the Medical Profession
This post is Part 2 in a three-part series. Links to the other portions are found below.
Access to Legal Services: Lessons from the Medical Profession (Part 1 of 3)
Back in June, I wrote a reflection on access to justice that evolved out of classroom discussions in a second year poverty law class. Having given further thought to the issue over the summer, I’d like to re-visit the topic in a series of 3 posts. The basic premise is that the legal profession needs an analogue to the roles of nurses and other non-doctors in the health care profession. That is, we need to establish a new categories of legal professionals who are not lawyers, but who have specialized training in a particular area that qualifies them to provide a limited set of legal services.
Before I begin, I must make two notes about terminology. First, this series of posts focuses specifically on access to legal services, which is just one of many components in access to justice. A full access to justice strategy would include, inter alia, increasing the capacity and efficiency of courts, promoting alternative dispute resolution, and a multitude of other initiatives. Such topics will not be covered in this series. Second, when I speak of legal services, I am referring to a category of services that includes, but is not limited to, the work currently performed by lawyers. Certainly legal advice and representation fall under the heading of legal services, but there are other services that can properly be called “legal services” which are not typically performed by a lawyer. Later in the series, I will provide some examples of what I call “legal services” that include providing legal or practical advice based on statutory or case law interpretation, yet would not typically be the job of a lawyer today. As I will argue, we are already beginning to see a proliferation in the categories of legal professions occurring organically in the market.
My thesis in this series is that access to legal services is not coextensive with access to lawyers. Traditional approaches to access to justice over-emphasize the need to increase the pool of lawyers doing legal aid or pro bono work. These are laudable and important goals, but it are not a complete answer to the crisis of access currently facing Canadian jurisdictions. For a more complete solution, we would do well to model our profession after the example set by health professionals.
In particular, we need to abolish the idea that lawyers are the exclusive providers of legal services and advice. Instead, we should create new categories of legal professionals analogous to the medical profession, with it’s myriad of different types of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, and others. While preserving the current qualifications of a lawyer (analogous to those of a physician), we can supplement the existing legal market with a myriad of professionals with carefully-defined roles and responsibilities, along with specialized training commensurate to those responsibilities. These non-lawyer legal professionals might be analogous to the roles of nurses in the medical profession. Importantly, we can ensure quality of service through an accountability model similar to colleges or associations of nurses.
Before leaping into my proposals, though, it will help guide our discussion to think about the shortfalls of traditional attempts to promote access to legal services. The basic problem is this: there is a demand for legal services that vastly exceeds the capacity of today’s lawyers to serve. As a result, the price of legal services is prohibitively high for many individuals, businesses, and other entities. The end result is that the wealthiest segment of the population gets full access to counsel, while the rest of us get no access. This creates a class-based disparity that has the potential to work injustices in legal outcomes (not just in terms of litigation, but in far more pervasive ways as well).
The traditional response to this phenomenon has been to shift the distribution of legal services away from the extremely wealthy and toward the rest of the population. This happens in two ways. First, state-funded legal aid centres provide limited representation to low income people for the most pressing and essential forms of litigation (mainly criminal and family matters, although very occasionally other types of services are provided as well). Second, non-legal aid lawyers sometimes take on pro bono cases or work for a reduced rate.
This approach suffers from at least three crucial flaws:
- it only affects the distribution, and not the capacity, of legal services;
- it is difficult and costly to effect changes in distribution of services; and,
- it still leaves significant gaps in access to legal services.
The most glaring flaw in the traditional approach is that it fails to address the underlying mismatch between supply of and demand for legal services. Increasing the number of lawyers who choose legal aid or pro bono work only decreases the number of lawyers working in other areas. While the distribution is made slightly more equitable (and only slightly), the inadequacy of legal service providers to meet the needs of the community at large remains. Unless the pool of law school graduates and new lawyers can be increased dramatically (perhaps by an order of magnitude or more), persuading more lawyers to do legal aid is no solution to the underlying problem of inadequacy.
Having too few lawyers to meet the demand for legal services creates a second challenge for legal aid in that it drives up lawyers’ remuneration. As a result, it becomes more and more difficult for the government to hire and retain legal aid lawyers. The issue of inadequate remuneration for legal aid has come to a head in Toronto where the Criminal Lawyers’ Association has been calling for its members to boycott taking legal aid certificates since July. In a sense, the attempt to provide adequate legal aid faces a geometric challenge: how can the government afford to simultaneously hire more lawyers and increase the levels of remuneration for legal aid? The short answer is that most governments either can’t or won’t do both (and in many cases either), ensuring that legal aid will never be adequate to meet the needs of low income individuals.
Finally, even if we were able to drastically increase the capacity of legal aid, we would still face gross inadequacies in access to legal services. Most legal aid centres only deal with a limited set of legal issues and only provide those services to those below an arbitrary income cutoff. While criminal defence and some family matters are usually covered, this barely scratches the surface of the legal services that a low income person might require. Moreover, due to the cutoffs, there is a significant pool of individuals who earn too much money to qualify for legal aid, but don’t earn enough to actually hire a lawyer.
All of the above problems should drive home the point that until we drastically increase the pool of legal service providers, we cannot possibly address the crisis of access. The most immediate inference that can be drawn from these facts is that we need to increase capacity in our law schools and admit more graduates into the profession. This would certainly be a positive step, and I am encouraged to see discussions in both Ontario and British Columbia about the possibility opening new law schools as means to increase the number of law school graduates.
Unfortunately, increasing capacity in law schools won’t be enough. The difficulty in cranking out more law school graduates is that law students are expensive to educate. Although tuition fess (which are, in my view, excessive already) defray some of the cost of teaching, the fact remains governments still subsidize about half the costs of a legal education. In this sense, increasing law school capacity won’t succeed for the same reason that increasing legal aid capacity won’t succeed: governments simply aren’t able or willing to make the investments necessary to complete the task.
From this discussion, it is clear that a new approach is needed. I submit that a more complete solution to the crisis of access to legal services should fulfil the following conditions:
- it should increase the pool of legal service providers in order to address the overall shortage of lawyers;
- is should increase the capacity of legal aid and other entities to provide legal services free of charge;
- it should ensure access to legal services for people of all income levels, including low and middle income people;
- it should not be cost-prohibitive from a government viewpoint; and,
- it should ensure a high quality of legal service as well as competence and integrity among all legal professionals.
In Part 2 of this series, I will examine how the medical profession has attempted to address similar challenges in access to health services. In particular, I will explore the emergence of professionally regulated nursing in the early 20th century and other fragmentations of the medical profession. Using this as a template, I will posit some analogous proposals to fragment the legal profession into a number of specialized jobs with specialized training, regulation, and oversight commensurate to job responsibilities.
In Part 3, I will explore some specific examples of how the fragmentation of the legal profession is already taking place, posit some possibilities for new legal qualifications, and address some possible objections to my proposals (including a possible concern about “watering down” the level of competence and integrity required of legal professionals).
Access to Legal Services: Lessons from the Medical Profession
This post is Part 1 in a three-part series. Links to the other portions are found below.
Want Some Free Legal Advice?
It’s something many lawyers complain about – being ambushed by friends and family with legal problems and expecting an instant answer. Blogging lawyers also face this dilemma from their general readership.
Both are likely to suggest that the person come to their office for a more in-depth consultation. That, and the legal problem thrown in your face is blocking the view on the gorgeous beach.
Now there’s an online site that you can divert these people to for legal advice, or to be more precise, legal information. AdviceScene is staffed by qualified lawyers and judges (yes, judges) who answer questions from the general public.
Although they are careful to refer people to lawyers when necessary as well, they can give the public a few tips on legal principles and how the system works.
As law students we have a similar challenge of not wanting to provide legal advice, and also behave overly cautious in not misrepresenting ourselves as lawyers. Nancy Kinney, founder of AdviceScene, reached out to us and we were more than happy to refer the many inquiries we get over to some qualified professionals.
But lawyers should be eager to join a project like this as well. The site is a great way for lawyers to showcase their talent and build on their client base, especially during these uncertain times. In addition to the free profile on the forum, lawyers can be listed in the site’s directory.
It’s still a young project, but one that can succeed if Canadian lawyers are interested in helping to empower the general public with legal information.
Just save your Q&A until you get back from your office, and not on the beach, or you’ll defeat the whole purpose.
Update
Terry Romaniuk, a Public Legal Education Staff Lawyer with Alberta Law Line, a sub division of Legal Aid Alberta, brought to my attention that they have been offering 4 hours of free legal advice to all qualified Albertans since 2004.
They also have have 3 former members of Alberta’s judiciary on their 27 member staff.
Cross-posted from Slaw
German Multinational Loses Teapot Battle
Have a cuppa.
First posted on Commercial Law International on April 3, 2009.
It is an understatement to say that the English take their tea very seriously. And it is little wonder why a small teashop in Surrey, England, even when faced with potential financial ruin, would not back down from a much larger German multinational. This is a tale about tea better yet teapots; a David and a Goliath; and lest I forget the rights to uses a logo.
Not long after the Tea Box opened, providing an up-market alternative to the run of the mill ‘main street’ coffee shop, it was faced with a legal challenge from a Duesseldorf based company. It would seem Teekanne, which happens to mean teapot in German, took exception to the hand painted teapot logo that Tea Box was using. Teekanne claimed that it was too similar to its own logo and could cause customer confusion.
What Teekanne wasn’t counting on – I guess they expected such a small time operation to be impressed by its sized and resources and cave in but this is the UK and we are talking a bout tea but I digress. What they were not counting on was that one of the UK’s leading intellectual property firms coming to the rescue of Tea Box. Withers & Rogers LLP took on the case pro bono- for my none legal people out there this means free. This is good to see, as a profession we need more of this. The words pro bono for lawyers as become all too often associated with criminal, civil rights, family or judicial review matters, please don’t read this as a dig at the lawyer who perform such work, they are doing a great community service, however, the community can also be served when commercial law firms take on such cases.
And now back to the story.
After receiving early indications from the UK Intellectual Property Office that it would likely rule in favour of Tea Box, Teekanne promptly withdrew, great for Tea Box but not so great for Teekanne. Not did it lose money from mounting this legal challenge but it also had the effect of improving the market awareness of the Tea Box brand. You could even say that for Tea Box Commercial Awareness Is Global – hahahhahah, sorry about the cheesy plug for the site but hey I am a future lawyer trying to carve out a niche for my self.
Who Says Lawyers Are Rats?
The Globe & Mail recently reported on a recurring event that flies in the face of the popular stereotype of lawyers 
being vile creatures beyond salvation. The Lawyers Feed the Hungry program has been providing several free meals per week to the hungry for ten years now and there’s no end in sight despite a slowing economy.
Since its inception, the event has been funded by donations, operated by lawyers, judges and law students, and located in the cafeteria of the Law Society of Upper Canada.
So this event is nothing new, but the pièce de résistance of this delectable deed has to be the upcoming Christmas dinner, including a savory serving of filet mignon, purchased personally by Martin Teplitsky, the event’s founder (no more alliterations, I promise).
As if the deed wasn’t kind enough, Teplitsky will also be giving ten dollars of his own money to each of the 600 expected guests. The Globe & Mail quoted him as saying that people who have nothing would be grateful “just having ten bucks to buy cigarettes or a bottle of wine.”
I think that’s the fact that gets me the most. It runs completely contrary to the most famous cop out so many of us use to justify not giving money to the poor: “They’re just going to blow it on cigarettes and booze.”
Teplitsky clearly recognizes that people who are down on their luck have just as much of a right to some vices as the rest of us. And I don’t know about everyone else, but if I was dependent on charity for Christmas dinner, I’d probably want a little wine myself. I’m also willing to bet that the proportion of lawyers plagued by alcoholism is probably close to that of the homeless, so be wary of lawyers asking for loans.
Speaking of wine, this Christmas dinner I’ll be raising my glass to all of the good folks involved in the program, working hard to help the hard up. Here’s to another ten years.
If you’re interested in making a donation, you can send a cheque or questions/comments to:
The Law Society Foundation
130 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON, M5H 2N6
lsf@lsuc.on.ca
Med Students Think They’re Isolated? Hah, Wimps!
A study a couple months ago indicated that medical students are socially segregated from each other.
The reasons included:
- High workloads
- school located outside the main campus
- High numbers of contact hours, outside the university
This seems to indicate that contact, inside the university, would alleviate the problem. They should learn a lesson from law students and quickly discover otherwise.
The drawbacks of this supposed isolation included:
- Being a member of a cohesive in-group can increase an individuals feelings of self-worth and lead to perceived superiority over, and prejudice and discrimination towards, members of out-groups
- It lessens integration with clients, who come from a broad section of society
- They usually have to work with other professionals
- Communication is an important skill for dealing with members of the out-group
The sense of superiority in law often leads to a self-selection of dealing with certain members of society, which is probably why pro bono goes the wayside far too quickly.
The CBC reported recently that we should improve medical students’ learning environment by providing sleep breaks. Well, law firms already encountered and overcome that hurdle.
As for working with others and communication, well, all of that is overrated by too many law firms.
Remember this?
Experienced lawyers work with clients. Young lawyers work with paper. You like working with paper, right?
Why You Should Apply to Law School
What I love best about the law is the ability to challenge and break down stereotypes.
For example, Canadians generally overestimate the number of minorities that have committed a crime, which is usually lower than the general population.
However, the 1995 Report of the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System stated, it is no secret that “black accused, for example, are more often held without bail”.
The need for advocates to fight this subtle yet pervasive form of discrimination is pressing indeed.
Maybe Criminal law isn’t your thing.
A recent survey indicated that the average salary in Canada was just over $36,000.
The jobs that required a high school education a generation ago now require a bachelor’s degree. The opportunities simply are just not there for recent university graduates without professional and advanced degrees.
Lawyers and legal professionals ranked the highest out of all careers in Canada, with an average of $123,000 for lawyers and $178,053 for judges. Only specialist physicians made slightly more.
But medical schools in Canada are swarmed with applications. There are only 2,400 positions a year across Canada, but there has been a 20% increase in applications recently. Only 0.5% of applicants to McMaster University and 6% at UWO are accepted.
If you have a science background and thought that your only alternative to med school was graduate research, you’re wrong. One of the booming areas of law is intellectual property, and lawyers in this field almost always have a science or engineering background before law school.
That doesn’t mean getting into law school is easy though. You do need a strong undergraduate GPA, and have to worry about this pesky test called the LSAT.
But it’s worth it. A legal career allows you to pursue professional goals while maintaining an advocacy role within society.
And because the law affects nearly everything we do, there are areas of law that are of interest to everyone.
Fred Rodell, a former professor at Yale, wrote back in 1939, in a book entitled “Woe unto you lawyers,”
It is the lawyers who run our civilization for us – our governments, our business, our private lives. Most legislators are lawyers; they make our laws. Most presidents, governors, commissioners, along with their advisers and brain-trusters are lawyers; they administer our laws. All the judges are lawyers; they interpret and enforce our laws. There is no separation of powers where the lawyers are concerned. There is only a concentration of all government power – in the lawyers. As the schoolboy put it, ours is “a government of lawyers, not of men.”
It is not the businessmen, no matter how big, who run our economic world. Again it is the lawyers, the lawyers who “advise” and direct every time a company is formed, every time a bond or a share of stock is issued, almost every time material is to be bought or goods to be sold, every time a deal is made. The whole elaborate structure of industry and finance is a lawyer-made house. We all live in it, but the lawyers run it.
And in our private lives, we cannot buy a home or rent an apartment, we cannot get married or try to get divorced, we cannot die and leave our property to our children without calling on the lawyers to guide us. To guide us, incidentally, through a maze of confusing gestures and formalities that lawyers have created.
A legal career is not only the smart move in tomorrow’s volatile markets, it’s the right one.
The deadline for law school applications in Ontario is Nov. 3, just over a month from now. You still have time to prepare your application and get it in.
Based on a speech given at the University of Western Ontario. Acknowledgment is provided to Craig Cameron of the Black Law Students Association, Ugbad Farah of the African Students Association, and Carly McLarty of the Caribbean Students Organization for hosting the talks.
Success Should not come at Expense of Social Justice
York University President Emeritus Harry Arthurs told graduands at Spring Convocation ceremonies last June,
…if you have abilities, if you have resources and opportunities, you also have an obligation to use them on behalf of people who don’t.
Arthurs, a renowned labour law scholar, graduated with his law degree from the University of Toronto in 1958.
A video of his speech is available here.
Practicing Attorneys Don’t Make that Kind of Money
The Wall Street Journal blog interviewed Kirsten Wolf, what they describe as a law-school “naysayer.”
They asked her how she liked law school, and although she liked the intellectual aspects of it, she disliked the competition for jobs.
They also inquired about the much obsessed over grades. Despite being a B+ student, she didn’t get the jobs she wanted and reconsidered everything. She finished the degree so that she would at least have something in return for her debt.
But her situation didn’t improve drastically over time,
Right now I owe $87,000 on my student loans. I work in a business now that’s not lucrative, so I’m on a 30-year repayment plan. But I’ve decided doing something I care about is worth financial sacrifice.
She explains how she got into this situation,
…the jobs that you think are going to be there won’t necessarily be there at all. Most people I know that are practicing attorneys don’t make the kind of money they think lawyers make. They’re making $40,000 a year, not $160,000. Plus, you’re going to be struggling to do something you might not even enjoy. A few people have a calling to be a lawyer, but most don’t.
They ask if she regrets doing law, and if it’s useful in her current line of job,
Yes. I do get value out of it. It helps in the work that I do as there is legal component to being an agent. It makes my clients feel better. But is that worth paying student loans until five years before my social security kicks in?
Jordan Furlong of the Law21 blog said in response,
I can’t conceive of graduating from school $87,000 in debt, even though this is reality for many new US lawyers and a growing number of Canadian ones… my eight years of post-secondary education ran me, at most, $20,000. Some students now burn through that in a year.
But there are some important differences that we’ve pointed out before.
Canada does not have an elite law school system (despite what Maclean’s might think); all of our schools are considered equal in merit and content, and the market usually treats them as such.
But the Wall Street Journal has pointed out some other trends in the U.S. that could be more pertinent to Canada.
An article early in this school year stated,
A law degree isn’t necessarily a license to print money these days.
They cite a survey in John Heinz’s Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar, which found that incomes for private and sole practitioner lawyers have dropped drastically.
Larger firms were relatively insulated by these changes.
One similarity in these findings that could be applicable to Canada is the stiffer competition in bigger cities.
Although salaries are higher in places like Toronto, Edmonton, and Calgary, there are also fewer spaces. Living expenses also often limit salary increases found in major urban firms.
Despite all of this, prospects for lawyers in Canada is still considered strong for the near future.
Perhaps one of the best ways to find fulfillment as a lawyer is to look beyond salaries alone, and keep in mind the immense opportunities for public interest work that can be done on the side.
As advocates for social justice and integral players of the workings of society, practicing attorneys just don’t need to make that kind of money.
Once those loans are paid off, that is.
Law Without the Suits
Casual Practice
Christina Binkley has commented on how the casual workplace has affected legal practice.
But she claims once they go casual, it’s difficult to get them to dress up again.
According to her,
…in lawyering, half the battle is the posturing. Many experienced lawyers see their wardrobe as a tool to win the trust of clients, juries and judges. Legal associates who aren’t sartorially prepared may not be invited along to a new-client pitch or to take a leading role in court, regardless of the office’s stated “business casual” dress code.
Wardrobe Justice
We would hate to think that justice is dispensed through such superficialities as counsel’s attire.
But as a result, Binkely reports that some firms actually turn down more talented associates during job interviews based on their grooming and appearance.
Binkley cites Rosemarie Arnold, a trial lawyer that attempts to justify the practice by saying it’s all about control.
Does power suit mean power presentation? Arnold says,
Trying a case is like a movie. Wardrobe is everything.
But does a $150,000 a year on clothing then indicate greater problems in access to justice? Pro Bono clients are probably not funding Arnold’s Gucci or Dolce & Gabbana.
And we suspect most clients would prefer a dishevelled but genius lawyer that accomplishes their goals, rather than a pretty face that provides some eye candy.
Some Dissenters
One commentor inquired,
Well… what about the west coast where you have to interact with dot com executives that have a different take on fashion. Showing up in a suit at a tech firm may be frowned upon.
Another points out,
Who cares?! If the job is done with precision, then who cares?! A moron in a suit is still a moron.
And are things different now?
Old fogey partners get over it. Times have changed.
Even Canadians get hot. Isn’t body odour worse than not wearing a jacket?
I’m always in court so I don’t really have a choice. I wear a suit every day. Its not too bad during the winter but wearing a suit in 90 degree weather in the summer really sucks.
…and the debate continues…
Partners Without Borders
McCarthy Tétrault announced recently that they are the first firm to join Partners Without Borders with Avocats Sans Frontieres in Quebec.
The organization was founded in 1992 in Belgium, and founded the Quebec chapter in 2002.
The news release states,
By becoming the first major Canadian law firm to be granted the status of “Partner without Borders,” McCarthy Tétrault continues its long tradition of providing pro bono legal services and community outreach.
LawIsCool has previously mentioned McCarthy Tétrault as the 2006 winners of the Canadian Pro Bono Awards, and is pleased to see them continue their support of such initiatives.
Jordan Furlong says on Law21,
Any law firm worth its charter has always been active in its community, of course, but in this age of megafirms with global reach, we’re starting to see super-national firms display a truly remarkable degree of involvement in issues and organizations that transcend the usual local undertakings. Check out DLA Piper, whose New Perimeter project is an incredible piece of work: a worldwide pro bono initiative that has seen 13,000 lawyer hours contributed to, inter alia, drafting new judicial laws in Kosovo, restructuring a micro-lending project, developing a worldwide food bank system and creating a human rights center in southern Africa. This is work on the scale of the CBA’s sterling International Development Committee, but supported by a for-profit firm rather than a non-profit association.
LawIsCool interviewed Jordan previously on the CBA and its benefits to students.
Public Interest Career Tough But Rewarding
by Alex Dimson (from the October Issue of Nexus, Western Law’s Student Newspaper)
It takes business savvy and a tempering of salary goals but ultimately a career in public interest can be highly rewarding, one of Canada’s most famous public interest lawyers told Western law students recently.
In a talk on public interest careers, Murray Klippenstein discussed the challenges he faced trying to build the law firm that bears his name. What made him successful was not his idealism but rather a “focus on the economics of law office management” he said, noting how he carefully manages his firm’s budget.
Klippenstein, best known for his work defending the estate and family of Dudley George, the native rights advocate killed in Ipperwash provincial park in 1997, also discussed the personal challenges of doing public interest advocacy, noting that he makes only a quarter of what his fair market value is.
“I had to ask myself, can I afford to do this?” he said, acknowledging that it was initially a challenge to watch his peers make high salaries, with the rewards of expensive cars and cottages. Looking back, he said he has no regrets. “The answer is I feel great… and I get to go to all [of my law school friend’s] cottages and I don’t have to worry about maintaining them,” he said to laughter from the audience.
Klippenstein said that he was able to find an inner balance by reading the economic literature on happiness, which maintains that personal income has a limited effect on happiness, and he said that he feels ahead of the curve when it comes to achieving a fulfilling life, citing the personal rewards that come from his practice. Pointing to the presence of Dudley George’s brother Sam in the audience, he said that “his happiness comes from helping real people” and that he has built many long-lasting friendship through his practice.
He also discussed other public interest careers – including a career in academia or in government. He said that neither option is ideal, he said, pointing out that while individuals pursuing either career stand to make a solid income of between $120,000-180,000 government lawyers tend to be locked into their career path and are ultimately beholden to the government of the day, which can sometimes put them on a path directly at others with the public.
Professors on the other hand, face the pressure of publishing and there are never any guarantees that their work is helping the public or even being read, he said. In the end, Klippenstein said that no career choice is ideal and the sacrifices a public interest lawyer must make means that it is not for everyone. Ultimately, he said that students will be able to find their own path and he encouraged students who feel up to it to try articling for his firm and some of the other social justice firms out there.
