Down by law

“If you graduate law school with some idealism regarding the public service aspect of legal practice,” Addario says, “it’s a terrible time to choose that path.” He cites the cost of legal education as a major factor driving students away from more public-oriented careers: “It’s very hard to watch your classmates make two, three, or four times what you’re making.” As Canada has moved toward an American-style legal market, with high tuition and high starting salaries at top firms, some areas of law simply can’t keep up.

Many students go to law school with definite ideas of how they’d like to make a difference, or at the very least with the general sense they would like to do something worthwhile. It may not be family law or criminal defence. Similar problems exist in every field of poverty law—meaning fields where people interact with the legal system not because they want to but because they have no choice. Inevitably, many of these clients are poor and vulnerable. It is reasonable to expect lawyers entering these fields to make at least some personal sacrifice. But there must also be a limit. When the gap in income and resources becomes too wide, it threatens the balance required in an adversarial legal system, and it undermines our stated commitments regarding access to justice.

Even more than a small paycheque, that may be the greatest disappointment many law students face after graduation. The sincerely held belief that their work is important makes it easy for lawyers to absorb some cost, but it also makes it hard to see the system neglected. “It is very discouraging,” says Addario. “I just don’t understand the instinct to be stingy around a program that holds so much of our justice system together.” For him, and the criminal defence bar he represents, this is about more than just a long-overdue raise: it’s about whether the work they do is valued. That’s a concern to which any lawyer, and indeed any worker, should be able to relate.

For current and future law students, questions over how and why this situation has come about are secondary to the simple reality. The income gap between lawyers working in areas of public law and those in the corporate-commercial sector has never been wider. That pits the very motives that led many people to law school in the first place against the need and desire to earn a reasonable living. For anyone faced with that choice, there may not be a single right answer. But the justice system as a whole is poorer for it.