RSS FeedAnnouncing the Launch of ObiterTweet by Steven Pulver
It’s a law student’s dream – or maybe a nightmare. Law firm recruiters scouring social media networks to find an appropriate candidate for their firm.
The current recruitment process does little to reveal the personality, collegiality, drive and habits of applicants. It does nothing to demonstrate their business connections, an important quality for “finders,” or political involvement, for firms that engage in lobbying and government relations.
The majority of law students do spend hours on social media platforms, usually behind walled gardens that they think are impermeable, so why wouldn’t law firms go where they are? We’ve already seen Edward Prutschi discuss how his firm used Twitter during articling recruitment, which helped them find Joel Welch.
Earlier today Michael Fitzgibbons of Borden, Ladner, Gervais LLP in Toronto pointed to this Globe article, showing an increasing trend by employers to use social media for recruitment. But is this just commentary about management-side employment practices, or could law firms be using it too? What about BLG, the largest law firm in Canada? (Hi Halla!)
The firm does have a Facebook group for employees, and another one for law students and lawyers to connect.
But the telling sign is a tweet from last Friday by the firm,
The Toronto office of BLG is looking for a Financial Services Associate with 3 to 4 years experience http://bit.ly/2RJO9I #law #job #career
It appears as if Bay St. firms are not only using Twitter for recruiting, but they’re using shortened urls and hash tags properly too! Kudos.
For our part, law students are trying to meet the law firms half way.
Enter the brainchild of Steven Pulver – a 1L at UWO – the first-ever Chief Technology Officer for our Student Legal Society. Pulver is working on ObiterTweet, an upcoming platform to help law students and law firms interact.
Or as he says,
Twitter, Meet Law School.
Law firms, meet Twitter at Law School too. Send him an email if you’re interested in participating.
No Articles? The Extreme Option.
In January 2008, the Law Society of Upper Canada (“LSUC”) Licensing and Accreditation Task Force issued a Consultation Report in which it predicted that for the licensing period 2009-10, there would be a gap of 400 candidates who would be unable to secure articling positions in Ontario. This prediction assumed the economy remained strong.
Fast-forward to August 2009. The economy is showing some limited signs of recovery but remains mired in recession. The formalized articling recruitment period regulated by LSUC for all intensive purposes has finished. The Ontario criminal defence bar is in the midst of a legal aid boycott with its membership suffering. And there are even more candidates looking for articles because of increased enrollment at international law schools and the legacy of the double cohort.
Although still early in the process, the increase number of students looking for articles in combination with fewer articling positions available due to the poor economy means that if you are still looking for articles, you may be in trouble.
Take comfort in the fact that the summer of 2010 when most articles begin is a year away. The economy may improve and many smaller firms hire on a needs basis. In fact, it is not uncommon for a firm to immediately hire an articling student when a big case comes along. But what happens next year when the heat of summer is bearing down and you have not secure articles?
Have you ever consider articling for free? Simply convince a member of LSUC to become your articling principal. The lawyer needs to be in good standing with the law society and has practice law for at least three out of the past five years and who is not currently the subject of a professional complaint.
After seven years of attending university, do you really need a paycheque? Think of it this way – you do not have to pay tuition – only living costs, dress clothing, loan payments, and a car. From your principal perspective, he or she is giving their valuable time to mentor you in the ways of the legal profession and the quid pro quo is for you to work for them without financial compensation. It is only for ten months after all and the banks will surely extend you more credit.
Undoubtedly some people will criticise the option of articling for free as the 21st century professional world equivalent of slavery. That such a barrier to licensing as the lack of paid articling positions only props up an existing oligarchy of privilege dominant in the legal profession. But these criticisms would likely only be voiced by those not desperately seeking their articles.
To be fair, LSUC has recognized the issue and has taken some action such as the creation of an articling registry, the streamlining the filing process, and the hiring of additional staff. However, it needs to do more. The registry is underused by employers and there are no alternatives to the articling requirement such as additional course work.
A failure by LSUC to adequately address the needs of the hundreds of law students who will be unable to secure their articles this coming year will certainly be noted by the Ontario Fairness Commissioner acting under her authority found in the Fair Access to the Regulated Professions Act.
A Rose By Any Other Name?: Law Schools, Legal Education, and Professionalism
Several times in the last few weeks I, and other budding law students, have been reminded that the future is bleak. For some, it is a collapsing job market. For others, it is a profession that is systemically broken. Yet for some it is the law schools themselves that are the subject of scorn.
Call me an optimist, but I’ve never been one for apocalyptic prognostications. It is not that the end isn’t nigh, relatively speaking, but rather that such soothsayers have a horrendous track record when it comes to actually pinning down the date. In fact, if I were a betting man (which, indecently, I am not), I’d put the odds against them every time.
This isn’t a matter of ‘thinking positively, and it will all turn out.’ Indeed, if things continue unaltered, they probably won’t turn out. What is the case, however, is that the choice facing law school administrators today should not be one of merely more of the same, but with clinics, as if a few more hours handling small claims files will teach you how to run a practice. If, then, the naysayers are right, the choice is between the high road or the low road, with little in between.
Criticisms
Before we can talk about solutions, though, we should probably understand the problem. First, and foremost, there is the charge that the legal scholarship produced by tenured law professors is fundamentally disconnected from the day-to-day practice of lawyers. Now, having limited exposure to both said theory and said practice, my comments on this matter should be taken with a grain of salt. What I can attest to, however, is that the majority of assigned readings in my honours seminars on contemporary political theory (neutrality and perfectionism and liberalism and toleration) were written by, ostensibly, legal theorists. This is not to say that such questions don’t necessarily contain legal aspects or implications, but it does demonstrate how such work is not as purely ‘legal’ as some of its critics would like.
Second, there is the complaint that law schools focus too much on providing a ‘liberal’ education and not enough time on providing the ‘professional’ skills need to actually lawyer. While it might be worth probing the distinction made here, and the assumptions that underlie it, what is at issue at the moment is what kind of institution a law school is meant to be. This gets to the heart of the criticism that law schools have been attempting to respond to, it would seem, through the growth of clinical programs.
The final criticism I will mention here is the non-US problem of the shortage of apprenticeship positions available to new law graduates (I use apprenticeship so as to include the UK experience as well). While this is not a comment on the law school curriculum directly, the implicit concern is that if there are not enough positions in which a law graduate could learn the necessary skills to practice, then why not abolish the apprenticeship and shift the burden to the academic phase of their training. Furthermore, there is the insinuation that law students aren’t learning all that much of value at law schools anyway.
J.D. v. M.D. – What’s In A Name?
Those familiar with the history behind the American shift from the Commonwealth standard LL.B. to the, now contagious, J.D. designation will know that it was a, more or less, conscious effort to emulate the medical profession. Some have drawn the connection even closer by arguing that if one were to look for cutting edge, practical work in each of the two respective fields, then one would be quite disappointed if one had chosen to search in the vaunted halls of the t14. The assertion is that, as we saw above, law schools, unlike medical schools, are simply out of touch with their profession. The analogy, however, misses one crucial point.
That is, medical schools create doctors, surely enough, but they do not create medical practitioners. The point of the distinction is to note the (prolonged) period of apprenticeship required by, an otherwise fully qualified, doctor in order to practice medicine in their own right. In turn, this point of distinction is to draw attention to, particularly the American, but also the Canadian practice with regard to law students and lawyers. The practice with M.D.’s clearly indicates an acceptance on the part of society that, given the complexity of the subject, no amount of class time can substitute for an extended immersion in its practical application. J.D.’s, to the contrary, are expected to function with little (the Canadian approach) or no (the US approach) practical experience in the practice of the subject at hand.
A Fork in the Road?
It would seem, then, that the problem is not so much with the requirement to do three years of law school on top of a four year undergraduate program (the de facto if not the de jure requirements). Indeed, the problem is not with the schooling at all, but the lack of practical training provided to would-be lawyers. As such, it is the legal profession that must take the lead in deciding just what kind of profession they want to be before they can expect the law schools to oblige them; the law schools simply cannot aim at a moving target.
The first option for the profession would be to adopt the medical model more closely and arrange for longer (or any, as the case may be) on-the-job training programs. In effect, J.D.’s would get a similar kind of residency as their ( however distant) medical cousins. This would then in turn imply that the legal profession, and our society as a whole, genuinely feels that the body of law which lawyers manipulate, and the operation of their practice, is comparable in its complexity to the body that doctors (i.e. medical practitioners) manipulate. Do not misunderstand me, there are, and will forever remain, stark differences between the two professions, but purely in terms of practical training, I think there remains something to be learnt as well.
The second option would be to do away with the second-entry requirement entirely and adopt a model more akin to the current English and Welsh practice or the practice of other professions. For example, in Ontario becoming a Chartered Accountant requires (at least) an undergraduate degree with the requisite courses, passing the necessary exams, and somewhere close to two and a half years of supervised experience. Similarly, to become a certified Professional Engineer requires an undergraduate degree in engineering or applied science, passing the requisite exams, and four years of supervised practice. There are other direct entry professions, but these two provide a sufficient example of an alternative approach to legal education and licensing.
Where To?
The question seems, then, which of the two routes that should be taken. Personally, I don’t see the practice of North American legal education adopting the English (and Welsh) model anytime soon. Rather, I’d bet (and remember, I’m not a betting man) that, if anything, it would move toward the, for a lack of a better term, ‘medical’ model (and, for what its worth, Mr. Furlong doesn’t disagree). Or, at least, I hope it does. What is clear is that the current model satisfies no one – not students, not employers, and, probably, not even professors. If a change happens at all, the only question will be how long it will take and who will push for it.
What do you think? Does legal education need change and, if it does, in which direction? Or, perhaps, I’m totally out to lunch – I’ll leave that up to you.
Articling is Good for Your Mental Health
Articling is also good for relieving stress. At least that’s what Brian Bell would claim.
Bell is CEO of the Windsor Public Library. He accumulated enough sick days to take time off from work. He even provided notes from his doctor saying he was stressed and overworked. But then they found out he was articling during his time off.
We’ve talked about other lawyers who double dip at jobs. But they weren’t CEOs of a publicly funded system, nor did they claim mental health to do so.
Bell had his legal education paid for by the generous library system’s education program. He has not indicated that running a major institution while taking law classes may have added to his stress.
The kicker is that Bell is still receiving his CEO salary, at a whopping $133,000 a year. He wisely declined to be compensated for his articling.
h/t Simon Chester of sLaw
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