{"id":9680,"date":"2009-02-03T00:48:31","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T05:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jackjia.com\/?p=9680"},"modified":"2009-02-03T00:48:31","modified_gmt":"2009-02-03T05:48:31","slug":"20090203%e5%8a%a0%e6%8b%bf%e5%a4%a7%e9%9d%a2%e4%b8%b4%e5%be%8b%e5%b8%88%e7%9f%ad%e7%bc%ba%e5%8d%b1%e6%9c%ba%ef%bc%8c%e4%b9%a1%e6%9d%91%e5%b0%a4%e7%94%9a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jackjia.com\/?p=9680","title":{"rendered":"20090203\/\u52a0\u62ff\u5927\u9762\u4e34\u5f8b\u5e08\u77ed\u7f3a\u5371\u673a\uff0c\u4e61\u6751\u5c24\u751a"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where\u2019s a lawyer when you need one?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SPECIAL REPORT: Canada\u2019s legal system is hobbled by our dearth of law schools<\/p>\n

Maclean’s magazine<\/p>\n

Canada, Featured – Written by Kate Lunau on Monday, February 2, 2009 10:22<\/p>\n

Some days, Marla Miller\u2019s phone just doesn\u2019t stop ringing. People call her family law practice in Edmonton all day long, trying to find a lawyer to hire, but there aren\u2019t any available. \u201cWe can\u2019t even call them all back. We\u2019re too busy,\u201d says Miller, a collaborative family lawyer and mediator. \u201cIt\u2019s really problematic. Even if someone has an emerging situation, or court pending, sometimes you just have to say, \u2018Good luck, sorry. We\u2019re not taking any more clients.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Miller\u2019s office isn\u2019t the only one fielding desperate calls. In Edmonton and Calgary, family lawyers are refusing to take on new cases, keeping closed client lists just as a family doctor would, says David Percy, dean of the University of Alberta law faculty. \u201cWe send out emails seeing if other lawyers are taking clients,\u201d Miller says, but even if there are some available, \u201cwithin two weeks, they\u2019re booked up.\u201d While Alberta\u2019s boom has aggravated the situation, other parts of the country report they\u2019re facing a lawyer shortage, too, especially rural areas.<\/p>\n

For Percy, the root of the problem is clear. \u201cIn the last several years, there\u2019s been a strong argument Canada does not graduate enough lawyers,\u201d he says. Prevailing wisdom might suggest that fewer lawyers is a good thing, but observers worry it\u2019s just the opposite, driving up the cost of legal services by restricting the number of people who can provide them. As with any other product, \u201cthe price of [legal services] is a function of supply and demand,\u201d says Vern Krishna, a lawyer and law professor at the University of Ottawa. When it comes to lawyers, \u201cwe have a deliberately constrained supply,\u201d he says. \u201cOur law schools have shut their doors tight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past 30 years, Canada\u2019s population and its need for legal services has ballooned, yet the number of law students who graduate each year is \u201cvirtually unchanged,\u201d notes Krishna. Today, Canada has 16 common law schools, the same number it had three decades ago, when the population was smaller by a third. While some schools have opened extra spaces, the impact has been minimal\u2014in 2006, 2,973 law students were admitted to the profession, just 133 more than a decade before.<\/p>\n

John G. Kelly runs Canada Law from Abroad, which links Canadian students with law schools in the U.K. He says Canada, with a population of over 33 million, has the lowest number of law schools per capita of any Commonwealth country: in a 2007 survey, he found that the U.K. has 75 law schools for a population of nearly 61 million, while Australia has 28 law schools, and 21 million people. Naturally, Canada also has a small supply of lawyers. Here, there\u2019s about one lawyer or notary for every 421 people. In the U.S., it\u2019s one lawyer for every 265 people.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that there aren\u2019t enough Canadians who want to be lawyers: some faculties get 10 applicants per spot, or more. Getting accepted, then, is a fiercely competitive process. Even at schools that require just two years of undergraduate education to apply, it\u2019s hard to find a student without a bachelor\u2019s degree or higher. At the University of Toronto, where law students must have a B.A., almost one-quarter have a graduate degree, too. The median average for entrants is 85 per cent. \u201cAcademic standards to get into Canadian law schools are far higher than any other common law country I know of,\u201d Percy says.<\/p>\n

For the thousands of Canadians who don\u2019t get accepted each year\u2014many of whom, undoubtedly, would make perfectly fine lawyers\u2014studying abroad is an attractive option, and foreign schools are only too happy to take them. Of the 750 law students at Bond University in Australia, over 100 are from Canada. The school even teaches Canadian constitutional law, and will begin offering Canadian corporate and tax law this year, \u201cnot because they\u2019re fascinated by it; they\u2019ve got a market,\u201d says Krishna, executive director of the Federation of Law Societies\u2019 accreditation committee, who notes that steps are now being taken to make it easier for foreign-trained lawyers to practise here. About 200 qualify to work here each year, including Canadians who have studied abroad.<\/p>\n

Getting a degree is, of course, just one step to becoming a lawyer. Provincial law societies (lawyers\u2019 self-regulating bodies) require new graduates complete a bar admission course and articling period, yet both vary in length across the country (the course is six months in Alberta, but just six weeks in Nova Scotia; articling requirements vary from six months to a year). This suggests \u201centry requirements may have been set, in some instances, at a higher than necessary level,\u201d further restricting the lawyer supply, notes a 2007 report from the federal Competition Bureau. (A response report prepared for the law societies dismissed this as \u201ctrivial,\u201d in part because lawyers can move between provinces.)<\/p>\n

For Canada\u2019s aspiring lawyers, the bar to entry is set high. Given their unique responsibilities, that\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing\u2014except if it skews who enters the profession, and the career path they take. To attend a Canadian law school, \u201cyou have to come from a well-off family that can afford to support you through seven years of university,\u201d Kelly says. Those who can pay a tutor for the Law School Admission Test, or can afford to shell out the money to study abroad (Bond\u2019s Canadian students pay a whopping $22,000 in tuition alone), are also at an advantage.<\/p>\n

In Ontario, where law school tuition was deregulated in 1997, two-thirds of law students come from the wealthiest 40 per cent of families in the province, a 2004 study found, and just 10 per cent from the bottom 40. Meanwhile, about 30 per cent of second-year law students with debt said the money they owe will have a \u201csubstantial effect\u201d on their careers, pushing them into high-paying jobs instead of public service, or work in more remote communities.<\/p>\n

As Ontario law school tuition skyrocketed, the number of graduates looking to take jobs in lower-paying public law fields (including criminal and family) has taken a dive, says Frank Addario, president of the Criminal Lawyers\u2019 Association. \u201cTop students are finding the money, and relief from law school debts, to be irresistible,\u201d he says. A first-year associate at a large private practice firm in downtown Toronto makes up to $105,000, plus bonuses as high as 30 per cent, according to ZSA Legal Recruitment. In Montreal and Vancouver, base pay is up to $93,000, and in Calgary it\u2019s $77,000. With salaries like that on offer, who\u2019d want to hang out a shingle in Kapuskasing?<\/p>\n

Law schools have long fought the notion they\u2019re merely a conveyor belt to big firm jobs. The University of Toronto, for example, offers Canada\u2019s only back-end debt relief program, which helps students choosing lower-income employment to pay off their loans. Schools host public law career fairs, run legal aid clinics, and provide other opportunities to learn about what\u2019s seen as alternative work. But some say the ivory tower could do more to make legal education accessible. Ryerson University is now considering opening a law faculty that would offer flexible, part-time courses, says Julia Hanigsberg, its general counsel and secretary of the board. Although part-time law programs are rare in Canada, they might attract a more diverse student body\u2014new immigrants, mature students returning to the workforce\u2014who\u2019d pursue a more diverse practice of law, she argues. And, because they could work part-time, \u201cthey leave law school with smaller debt loads and greater freedom to choose public interest or other lower-paying careers,\u201d says David Chavkin, a professor the American University Washington College of Law.<\/p>\n

Ironically, attracting a more diverse student body was exactly what Lakehead University was trying to do: it recently advanced a proposal for a new law school in Thunder Bay, one that would attract northern and Aboriginal students, and retain more lawyers in the area. \u201cWhat we hear from students, particularly Aboriginal students, is that they want a base closer to home,\u201d says president Fred Gilbert, who notes that all six of the province\u2019s law schools are in the south.<\/p>\n

In fact, Lakehead was just one of four Ontario universities (excluding Ryerson) that had new law faculties on the drawing board. But last year, the provincial government denied funding to all of them, concluding that demand from the student side hasn\u2019t increased enough to justify it (in 2007, 4,469 people applied to Ontario law schools, almost 1,000 more than 10 years before). And the Law Society of Upper Canada warned there may not be enough articling spaces for new students anyway. (Lakehead\u2019s independent survey identified enough articling jobs to meet the needs of the 55 law students it hopes to admit each year, Gilbert says.) Extra funding for law schools is rarely popular with government, notes Krishna: \u201cDo we say there\u2019s not enough residency [positions], so we\u2019re not going to train more doctors?\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the growing number of experts who say Canada needs more lawyers, there\u2019s one powerful group that disagrees\u2014the lawyers themselves. \u201cIt is simplistic to think that the high cost of legal services and problems of access to justice can be solved by simply adding more lawyers to the market,\u201d says Malcolm Heins, CEO of the Law Society of Upper Canada, who notes that legal services are still costly in the U.S., even though they have more lawyers per capita.<\/p>\n

Yet Canada\u2019s lawyer supply is so very restricted, and access to justice remains a struggle for so many, that it seems adding more legal service providers must be part of the solution. \u201cWe know there\u2019s the demand from the student side. We know there\u2019s the demand from people who need legal services,\u201d Hanigsberg says. \u201cOne can\u2019t help but look at that and say, how can it be that we don\u2019t need more lawyers?\u201d<\/p>\n

With Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze<\/p>\n

http:\/\/blog.macleans.ca\/2009\/02\/02\/where%e2%80%99s-a-lawyer-when-you-need-one\/<\/p>\n

————–<\/p>\n

Comments\uff1a<\/p>\n

Richard says: Feb 2, 2009 at 2:14 pm <\/p>\n

Wait a minute – this is completely misleading:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026yet the number of law students who graduate each year is \u201cvirtually unchanged,\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cin 2006, 2,973 law students were admitted to the profession, just 133 more than a decade before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGraduating\u201d and being \u201cadmitted to the profession\u201d are two completely different things. If you are going to demnstrate that the number of graduates is virtually unchanged, then why not provide the number of graduates? This is poor journalism and shoddy writing.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s a dearth of journalism schools we should be lamenting\u2026<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Darrell says: Feb 2, 2009 at 3:23 pm<\/p>\n

Family law – at least in my law school – has a bit of reputation for being a dying area. It\u2019s being taken over by professional mediators, some of whom are also lawyers but many of whom are not. Students would rather take corporate or IP tracks that will make them serious money than take a prohibitively expensive 3 year degree (plus one year articling and a bar admissions course) just to compete in the same space as mediators and paralegals. Moreover, cuts to legal aid funding have made practicing in the area much less lucrative – a lot of lawyers won\u2019t accept legal aid certificates even when they get them because they don\u2019t pay well, and the hours run out before the work is done. <\/p>\n

You also remember that there are schools in this country where a law degree runs $30,000 a year. While there may be a lot of people writing their LSATs and applying to law schools, there is only enough money to offer financial support to a certain number of them. <\/p>\n

The other reality is that a lot of Canadian law schools are packed to the gills as it is. Expanding them is costly, and naturally requires the faculty to expand as well. A great many law school courses are already taught by practicioners as it is. How many more can be recruited to accept teaching positions at new or expanded law schools in addition to their day jobs?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where\u2019s a lawyer when you need one? SPECIAL REPORT: Canada\u2019s legal system is hobbled by our dearth of law schools Maclean’s magazine Canada, Fea…
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