All Posts Tagged With: "law school"
The Lance stops printing, Rick Ross & law school
What students are talking about today (April 8th)
No more Lance newspaper? (garryknight/Flickr)
1. For the second time this semester, the uneasy relationship between a student newspaper and its student union overlords is front-page news. The Windsor Star, the local daily newspaper in Windsor, Ont., reports that The Lance student paper at the University of Windsor has been ordered to shut down their presses immediately. The outgoing board of directors of the University of Windsor Students’ Alliance voted last week—with no warning—to force The Lance to go “only online” because the paper was $24,000 in the red in February. The last printed issue had a cover story called “Electile dysfunction: Multiple allegations of corruption plague UWSA election,” which asked questions about possible corruption and incompetence in a recent UWSA election. Shutting down the print edition prompts questions about freedom of the press and whether the board has been vindictive. Kim Orr, the outgoing UWSA president, points out that the critical coverage was directed mostly at executive members and the chief returning officer, not the board of directors. Still, the timing is suspect. The Lance will be expected to operate on a third of its current $180,000 budget, which would leave it a shadow of its former itself. (Trust me, just because your publication is online doesn’t make it free.) The story is reminiscent of when Western’s student government decided to take away The Gazette‘s offices in January. A backlash caused them to retreat. Let’s hope this follows the same path.
2. American colleges are talking about a crisis in law schools. In 2011, nearly half of U.S. law graduates failed to find work in law, applications to law schools fell 38 percent since 2010 and, despite the poor prospects, graduates now finish with an average debt load of $98,500. Well, it looks like market economics are starting to have an impact in the other direction. The University of Arizona’s law school is cutting tuition up to 11 per cent. In Canada, most new lawyers can still find work, though articling positions are becoming harder to come by and tuition has risen a fair bit.
Continue reading The Lance stops printing, Rick Ross & law school
The five biggest campus news stories of 2012
From the turmoil of Quebec to the rise of the West
A naked protest in Montreal (DmpstrBaby/Flickr)
It was a record year for Maclean’s On Campus with more readers than ever, but perhaps that’s unsurprising considering how much there was to talk about. Based on clicks and comments, here are the top five campus news stories of 2012.
1. Quebec student groups helped toss a government and won a tuition freeze.
In March, Quebec student groups declared war on a planned tuition hike of roughly $2,000 over five years. By April, students at 11 of Quebec’s 18 universities and 14 of its 48 CEGEPs had declared “strikes” and were skipping classes. There were nightly marches in Montreal that made life miserable for many who lived and worked downtown. Students who dared go to classes, even after judges orders allowing them to return, were stopped by masked protesters. The nightly marches started turning violent and threatened the tourism industry. Something had to be done.
Continue reading The five biggest campus news stories of 2012
What students are talking about today (Sept. 13 edition)
A new monkey, Iran’s student club and new world rankings
Maurice Emetshu/Plos One
1. Scientists say they’ve discovered a new species of monkey living in the remote forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s only the second new monkey discovered in nearly three decades. The researchers have published on Cercopithecus Lomamiensis in Plos One. The monkey is known to locals as “Lesula.” Okay, so in that way, it’s not an entirely new discovery.
2. The president of the Iranian Cultural Association of Carleton University, a student group, solicited money for the club from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff, reports Maclean’s Michael Petrou. The now-closed Iranian embassy obliged, providing financial support. Canada lists Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (Sept. 13 edition)
Should articling be scrapped?
A shortage of positions in Ontario forces a reevaluation
Mezciems (Blair Gable)
From the Maclean’s Professional Schools Issue.
Mathew Mezciems thought he was doing everything right. He got into one of the country’s premier law schools and set his sights on extracurricular activities that would set him up for a job on graduation. Big firms look for leaders—or so goes the conventional wisdom. So at the end of his first year at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., Mezciems ran for a junior position on the law students’ society, and won. The following year, his peers elected him president.
The job consumed a surprising amount of time. “There are meetings during the week with faculty,” says the 27-year-old, “and office hours where students can come and talk to you.” By the end of his second year, his grades had slipped into the Bs, and Mezciems found himself without one of the all-important summer student positions that serve as entryways to articling. After graduating this spring, he still couldn’t find an articling job—a predicament that not long ago would have been unthinkable for such a prominent student. “I’m trying not to be worried,” he said last June from his home outside Kingston, the strain audible in his voice. “You have those moments of panic, but I’m trying to stay positive and not get too overwhelmed.”
Professional at a steep price
It takes a lot of creativity to finance second degrees
Pennington (Andrew Tolson)
From the Maclean’s Professional Schools Issue.
Last fall, when Kristen Pennington started at the University of Toronto faculty of law, she was surprised to learn of “an assumption” that students wouldn’t work during the school year. “I’d never been in school and not worked,” the 22-year-old says. “It wasn’t a question.”
During her first year in law school, Pennington held down three part-time jobs: she worked as an after-hours receptionist at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, as an executive assistant for a lawyer, and as manager of the undergraduate residence at Glendon Campus, part of York University, where she also lived rent-free. “I worked for my room,” she says. “It was a great expense to cross off the list.” The commute from Glendon to U of T’s downtown campus, on public transit, was “45 minutes on a good day.”
The 2012 Maclean’s Law School Rankings
What students are talking about today (Aug. 24 edition)
A dreadlocks ban, failing law schools and a “video game bar”
Elvert Barnes/Flickr
1. A business school dean at the historically-black Hampton University in Virginia is standing by his ban on dreadlocks and cornrows for MBA students. The ban has been in place since 2001, but at least one new student is refusing to cut his dreads. Dean Sid Credle says the ban helps students get used to the corporate uniform.
2. Law school “cannot continue in its present form,” says a Saskatchewan law professor. Schools purport to be academic, but students expect to learn practical things like how to draft contracts. “Wouldn’t everyone be happier if law schools stopped trying to be all things to all people, and instead focused on being either vocational schools or academic institutions?,” asks Michael Plaxton.
3. Canadian universities lag behind when it comes to using less-expensive e-textbooks. In the U.S., 15 per cent of sales are digital. In Canada, it’s still less than 10 per cent.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (Aug. 24 edition)
Trinity Western wants to open its own law school
Private university would have B.C.’s fourth law program
Photo by Joe Gratz/Flikr
Trinity Western University, a privately-funded Christian school in B.C.’s Fraser Valley, wants to open its own law school. As Canadian Lawyer Magazine reports, Trinity Western hopes for approval from the provincial government and the Federation of Law Societies of Canada within the next six to 12 months. The school envisions a three-year JD program that will take its first cohort of 60 students in September 2015.
If approved, the law program will be the fourth in B.C. Last year, Thompson Rivers University opened the province’s third law school in Kamloops.
Given that there is a national shortage of articling positions for law graduates, the decision to open new programs seems curious. But, as Trinity Western associate professor Janet Epp Buckingham told Canadian Lawyer Magazine, the school will hire an articling coordinator to help place students in positions post-graduation, and will encourage them to consider setting up shop in smaller communities. “The whole focus is really going to be on building skills alongside building legal analysis and understanding so that when students graduate from the law school they would be able to go into a small firm already with skills that they can use and apply,” she told the magazine.
Should professors speak out more?
Esteemed law professor Mary Eberts thinks so
Mary Eberts at Congress (from FedCanada)
Mary Eberts was a junior law professor at the University of Toronto in 1974 when she told her colleagues she planned to miss the July 8 faculty meeting to help get out the vote for Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Their reaction was bewilderment. Professors weren’t often politically involved.
Eberts got her day off and then left U of T in 1980 to join a Bay Street Firm. She remained an activist, giving her time to organizations like the Native Women’s Association of Canada.
Now she’s back in the academy as the Ariel Sallows Chair in Human Rights at the University of Saskatchewan. Three decades after her first academic job, she says it’s just as difficult for professors to get involved in civil society and speak out about their political beliefs. She argues Canadians are losing their expertise as a result.
I sat in on her talk at Congress 2012, Canada’s largest gathering of Humanities and Social Sciences, in Waterloo, Ont. (click to see a recording) and then I interviewed her in her house in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood. Here’s what she said about why professors so often stay silent, why she believes they shouldn’t, and how to square civic activism with their roles as teachers.
Should professors step up and engage more in civic life, even when it’s politically controversial?
Didn’t get what you wanted? Lawsuit! Lawsuit!
Students sue their schools and employers
Australian schoolgirl Ja'mie King (HBO.com)
An 18-year-old in Australia is suing her former high school because she says it’s their fault that her marks were too low to land her a seat at the prestigious University of Sydney law school.
No, it isn’t Ja’mie King of Summer Heights High, although it does sound like something she’d do.
Rose Ashton-Weir says she didn’t get the support needed to excel while at Geelong Grammar, a private boarding school. Darren Ferrari, a Geelong representative, points out that she could have studied law at several other universities. Apparently, that wasn’t good enough.
Continue reading Didn’t get what you wanted? Lawsuit! Lawsuit!
The articling shortage continues
Law students struggling to find work
Photo by Ian Barrett for Maclean's magazine
Law students are once again struggling to find articling terms, reports The Lawyer’s Weekly.
Articling is mandatory on-the-job training that lasts 10 months in Ontario. The Law Society of Upper Canada (Ontario’s self-regulator), says that 12.1 per cent of articling applicants were without jobs as of March 31, up from 5.8 per cent in 2008. LSUC is preparing a report on the problem.
The Lawyer’s Weekly blames the shortage on an imbalance between supply and demand. Law schools have admitted more students in the past decade. Enrollment is up 33 per cent at the University of Ottawa, for example. On top of that, foreign-trained lawyers are arriving in greater numbers, but firms aren’t adding many positions.
U of T law school adopts new grading system
But will it really reduce stress?
Photo by JD Hancock (DC Comics)
The only thing worse than stressing out about upcoming exams is when you’re done writing them and you stress out about the marks you’ll get.
The University of Toronto Law faculty knows this and they want to make students focus less on marks and more on “intellectual engagement.”
After two years of studying how to reduce stress about marks and help students enjoy their studies, the law faculty is considering dropping letter grades (A, B+, B, C+, C, D, F). Several law schools in the United States use the pass/fail system, including Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and Yale, they note. A pass/fail system can help reduce students’ anxiety over marks, they say.
Except, uh, U of T’s news system won’t be pass/fail. Instead, five categories of marks will be used: High Honours, Honours, Pass, Low Pass, and Fail. In other words, the letter grade system isn’t being dropped, it’s just getting a face-lift. It’s like making a director’s cut and calling it a new movie.
I’m not exactly sure how renaming the letter grades is supposed to reduce anxiety over marks. Instead of stressing about getting A’s, students can stress about getting ‘high honours.’
Here’s an idea: instead of assigning them grades, why not rank students on a superheroes scale, Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Green Lantern…
Then again, that might not work. Students would still fear getting an ‘Aquaman.’
Scott Dobson-Mitchell is a Biomedical Sciences student at Waterloo. Follow @ScottyDobson
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Video warns of “the dangers of law school”
Students poke fun at their future profession
A new YouTube video made by students at the University of Calgary warns teenagers about the “the dangers of law school.” It has reached 16,000 views since it was uploaded on Feb. 26.
“Dear 16-year-old me,” it starts, “I must warn you about law school. It’s where insecure over-achievers go to do stuff with their bachelor of arts.”
The students then poke fun at the profession’s moral dilemmas. “Your experience in law school will start with the promise of helping the community, doing what’s right,” says one student. “Then you’ll realize you’re destined to make rich companies richer by facilitating the purchase of other rich companies,” says another.
Jon Ng, the third-year law student who wrote the script, told The Huffington Post that the video is a parody of the “Dear 16-year-old Me” video produced by the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund.
It’s all in good fun. ”Don’t get me wrong,” Ng told Huffington Post, “I’m incredibly proud of being a law student, but if a friend told me they wanted to go to law school, I’d sit them down for a long chat.”
Lawyer calls for another new law school
We’ve heard of the rural shortage. But a suburban shortage?
Photo by Ian Barrett for Maclean's
Just months after British Columbia opened its first new law school in 30 years, a top lawyer is advocating for another one, this time in Surrey.
B.C.’s newest law school is at Thomson Rivers University in Kamloops, where its mission is, in part, to address the rural lawyer shortage.
Tony Wilson, an adjuct professor at Simon Fraser University, makes the argument that there’s a pending shortage in suburban Surrey too. He notes that the city near Vancouver is projected to be the biggest in B.C. by 2020. Surrey grew by 13.6 per cent between 2001 and 2006.
There’s plenty of work, Wilson argues in his letter to Canadian Lawyer. “Surery has… clients, many of them in real estate, real estate development, or other small or medium-sized businesses,” he says, “and if you’re into criminal law, the newspapers would suggest that opportunities abound.”
The 2011 Maclean’s Law School Rankings
From the 2011 Maclean’s Professional Schools Issue
Are a law school’s professors significant contributors to the intellectual life of their discipline? Do a law school’s graduates land the most sought-after jobs in government, the private sector and academia? These are the two questions Maclean’s annual law survey seeks to answer.
All of the data used in the Maclean’s law rankings are publicly available. All focus on law school outputs. Fifty per cent of the overall ranking is determined by faculty quality, and 50 per cent by graduate quality.
The four measures of graduate quality look at the success each law school has had producing graduates able to land the most competitive jobs. The indicators are:
Elite Firm Hiring: Maclean’s calculated how many of each school’s graduates are serving as associates at law firms on Lexpert’s list of the largest firms in Canada across all regions, or at one of the five leading New York firms, according to the employment website Vault. This was done by examining the online biographies of thousands of lawyers at dozens of law firms. To scale this measure to each school, the tally was divided by first-year class size, averaged over the past three years. This measure is worth 20 per cent.
National Reach: This indicator, based on the Elite Firm Hiring measure, is worth 10 per cent. It measures the proportion of each law school’s grads at leading firms who are working at firms other than the three that hired the most grads from this school. It’s a measure of the extent to which leading firms outside a school’s region hire its graduates.
Supreme Court Clerkships: A measure of how many of a school’s graduates have served as clerks at the Supreme Court of Canada, this indicator is worth 10 per cent. There are 27 clerks each year; it is one of the most competitive positions open to graduates. Maclean’s looked at the last six years’ worth of clerks. As with the other measures of graduate quality, the tally was divided by each school’s average first-year enrolment.
Faculty Hiring: Worth 10 per cent, this indicator looks at how many of a school’s graduates are professors at Canadian law schools, with extra weight given to grads hired by faculties other than their alma mater.
Faculty Journal Citations: In this measure of faculty quality, worth 50 per cent, Maclean’s employed the HeinOnline database of legal periodicals. The search included citations in international publications as well as Canadian journals in order to reflect the reality of a globalized academy. The number of citations recorded by each faculty member was measured; the tally for each school was then divided by the size of its faculty.
The methodology behind the Maclean’s law school rankings was created in co-operation with professor Brian Leiter, director of the Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values at the University of Chicago. The data were compiled by researcher Jane Bao. Ranking on each indicator and overall rank was determined using the statistical percentile method that Maclean’s has long employed in our annual university rankings. Our statistician was Hong Chen, of McDougall Scientific Ltd. statistical consultants.
Goodbye Bay Street. Hello Humboldt.
From the 2011 Maclean’s Professional Schools Issue
Photograph by Nayan Sthankiya
Click here for our 2011 Law School Rankings
When she was in law school, Amber Biemans always figured she’d practise in the city. After she and her husband had kids, though, she felt the pull of small-town life. At age 26, Biemans joined a firm in Humboldt, Sask. (population 5,900); two years later, she’d bought out a senior partner at the firm who was ready to retire. Making partner at age 28 was an “amazing opportunity,” says Biemans, now 32, but beyond that, “the benefits here are immense,” from the commute to work—which takes all of five minutes—to the close relationships she’s built with clients.
Former sex worker found dead
Wendy Babcock was advocate for safer sex work
Wendy Babcock, a prostitue-turned-law school student, has been found dead at the age of 32 in her Toronto home.
Babcock gained attention in 2009 after she progressed from homeless teenage prostitute to advocate for safer sex work and then to law student at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School.
A police spokesperson said there were no signs of foul play, reports the Toronto Star.
Babcock had attempted suicide on several occasions.
Among her achievements was the founding of a group that compiles information on bad sex work clients and her work with Street Health, which prompted an award from former Toronto mayor David Miller.
Babcock was raised in an abusive home and began selling sex at age 15. Her work forced her to give up her son to social services. Eventually, she quit prostitution and attended George Brown College. After succeeding there, she gained admission to Osgoode Hall, despite not having the required university credits. She had successfully completed the first two years of the four-year degree when she was found dead.
Asking for transcripts isn’t a rights violation
Failure was law school’s fault for not accommodating my chronic pain: student
A University of Windsor law graduate has had her Ontario Human Rights Complaint dismissed.
Anica Visic accused the law firm Elia Associates, where she articled in 2007, of discrimination after boss Patricia Elia asked to see a full transcript of her grades several weeks into her job with the firm — and then fired her. Visic had previously submitted only unofficial grades.
The full transcripts showed that Visic failed her first year of school in 2000 — a fact that she blamed on the University of Windsor, which she alleged failed to properly accommodate her disability. Visic said she suffered from pain in her arms, shoulders, upper back and neck, which made writing difficult. Windsor allowed her to repeat her first year, but didn’t expunge the failed courses.
Visic was dismissed from her job for her uncooperative behaviour — not because she had failed, Elia told the Windsor Star. “She made our staff cry. She was argumentative. Clients didn’t want to work with her.” Elia recommended to the Upper Canada Law Society that Visic article for at least six more months before writing her bar exam.
Ontario announces first new law school in 42 years
Aboriginal and Northern students preferred
Photo courtesy of steakpinball on Flickr
Canada’s lawyer shortage might finally start to improve. Ontario announced yesterday that it will fund the first new law school to be built in the province in more than 42 years. Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont. received $1.5-million in funding and hopes to enroll students by 2013.
The new school will be the seventh in Ontario and the first-ever in northern Ontario. The only other new law school announced for Canada since the 1980s is the one under construction at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., which will take its first 40 students in September.
Lakehead president Brian Stevenson said he aims to start with 55 students in 2013, but will accept up to 150 students after three years. The program will have a strong focus on aboriginal law, rural and remote practice, plus natural resource management — all specialties that cater to northern Ontario’s economy. The university will give preference to northern residents and aboriginal applicants.
Student sues law school over employment stats
Grad alleges she was misled her about chances of working as an attorney
A graduate of a law school in San Diego, Calif. has filed a class action law suit because she says her university, The Thomas Jefferson School of Law, knowingly misrepresented the likelihood that graduates would find work as lawyers. ”For more than 15 years, TJSL has churned out graduates, many of whom have little or no hope of working as attorneys at any point in their careers,” Anna Alaburda wrote in her complaint, according to The National Law Journal. Alaburda, who has $150,000 in student loans, says she chose TJSL because statistics reported in U.S. News & World Report said that 80 per cent of its graduates were employed after nine months. She writes that she “reasonably assumed” that meant full-time work as attorneys — until she learned that the school includes part-time and non-legal jobs in the figures. TJSL’s website continues to use similar statistics. They say 85 per cent of students from the 2009 class were employed, but they don’t say where. In Canada, there is little likelihood of similar law suits, as self-regulation has created a shortage of attorneys, rather than a surplus.
