Law Times

Page 2 August 20, 2018 • LAw times www.lawtimesnews.com It also includes eight lay benchers, who are appointed, the treasurer, the current attor- ney general of Ontario and ex- officio benchers, such as former treasurers, life benchers and for- mer attorneys general who held office up to 2010. When Law Times asked Mercer's opinion on whether the task force's proposals would pro- mote effectiveness and efficien- cy, he said he would wait for the consultation process before he reached any views himself, and he said that Convocation has to make the ultimate decision. "It's difficult, of course, with that many people to have every- one participate in a genuinely engaged way to hear all the per- spectives. It can sometimes be difficult to reach conclusions, and frankly, it's difficult to in- volve all of those people con- structively in roles within the law society," Mercer says. "On the other hand, a larger number allows for different perspectives to be brought to bear." The law society will accept comment until Oct. 15, the re- port said. David Howell, a business lawyer at ESB Lawyers LLP in Hamilton, Ont., says that, while he agrees with some of the sug- gestions to shrink Convoca- tion, it's better to focus on an evolution rather than making sweeping changes. For instance, Howell says, Convocation needs a certain number of experienced benchers to fulfil all the board and committee responsibilities, and having more frequent elec- tions or too few benchers might create a heavier workload for those that remain. "A reduction in principle is a good idea," Howell says. "But what needs to be re- membered . . . is Convocation really has two functions. One function is it sort of sits as a cor- porate board, the way you might have for a business corporation, where those boards might have 10 to 15 people. But it also sits as a policy-making body, kind of like a parliament. When it is sit- ting as a policy-making body, it's important that the Convocation ref lects the different interests of members across the provice to properly do its job." LT you need to do to become a law- yer," he says. Only 10 per cent of Ontario law firms provide articling posi- tions, and by August or Septem- ber each year, there are between 200 and 300 candidates that haven't secured articling slots, the law society estimated in a May report on licensure reform. In April 2017, Ryerson pro- vided a proposed curriculum for law students — if a school was approved — to the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. It outlines two-and-a-half years of mandatory courses, in- cluding courses on ethics, con- tracts, torts, property, criminal, constitutional, administrative and Indigenous law in the first year and business law, family law, civil procedure, wills and estates, advocacy and intellectual proper- ty in the second year. The curric- ulum also includes other required courses, such as the business of lawyering, social innovation and the law, legal innovation and ac- cess to justice solutions, according to Ryerson's FLSC proposal. Students would do five one- week boot camps at the begin- ning of each semester, the FSLC proposal says, which would focus on career planning, tech- nology innovation boot camp, accounting, taxation and fi- nancial analysis, coding and an Emotional Quotient/Cultural Quotient (EQ/CQ) boot camp. Ryerson's law school proposal received approval from the On- tario Universities Council on Quality Assurance in October 2017, and then from the Federa- tion of Law Societies of Canada in December 2017. A majority of benchers with the Law Society of Ontario also voted to approve the school in February. While the school has passed many of the necessary steps to officially open its doors, there are still more steps left to clear. The last stage of the external approval process awaits, from the Min- istry of Training, Colleges and Universities. So far, the province has not said what its plans are for a law school at Ryerson. "The government has not made any decisions related to Ryerson's proposed law school at this point," said a spokesman for the ministry on Aug. 8. Saloojee says the last step in the process for approval for the new law school "is receiving what's called 'program approval' from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities." "They haven't responded to us yet, but we anticipate six to nine months," he says. "It may be a tad longer, it may be a tad shorter, it's just that the government has an enormous amount on its agenda right now. So we wait in the queue." Ryerson's FLSC proposal suggested a tuition of $20,000 for the first year of the law pro- gram, which assumes a certain level of provincial funding, called a basic income unit, will be approved. "We are pretty confident, I think, that our students are de- serving, like any other student in the province of Ontario and any other law student, of receiving the BIU from the province, so I think we are pretty confident that's going to come our way. It is after all, we think, about our students. One of our pillars is ac- cess," says Saloojee. "The BIU funding [from the province] is an important com- ponent of access." There have been issues iden- tified by third parties with creat- ing a new law faculty at Ryerson. A letter released in November 2016, when Camille Cameron, then-president of the Council of Canadian Law Deans and cur- rent dean of the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University, said that Ryerson had missed an opportunity in the lack of con- sultation process and had pre- sented a "caricature of Canadian legal education." The CCLD letter also said that some of Ryerson's tech- related proposals are "hardly breaking new ground." In keeping with national standards, the Law Society of Ontario delegated responsibility to The Federation of Law Societ- ies of Canada approval commit- tee to consider new law program applications in the first instance and make recommendations to law societies as to whether they should be approved, according to the LSO report. The FLSC approval commit- tee said in its December 2017 decision that there were three concerns about the proposal, the faculty complement, the law school budget and the proposed physical resources for the faculty and students. In particular, the FLSC noted that Ryerson's plan to use exist- ing building space for the new law school might come under pressure if a new, dedicated space doesn't eventually go forward. "The Committee is of the view that if Ryerson is unable to secure provincial funding or is unable to demonstrate a suffi- cient alternative revenue source to offer a J.D. program, that these concerns would escalate to a deficiency and the program will be denied approval," the FLSC report says. The FLSC report also notes that the proposed tenured-track faculty complement is low in comparison to the proposed enrollment of students in the school. However, Peter Wardle, associ- ate counsel at Singleton Urquhart Reynolds Vogel LLP and chair- man of the law society's Profes- sional Development & Compe- tence Committee, who presented the FLSC report to the law soci- ety's Convocation in February, said those concerns are "actually routine and not something for us to be alarmed about," according to Convocation minutes posted on the law society's website. Saloojee notes that the school is not quite ready to open yet and is still in the process of assem- bling a dean and faculty. The proposed curriculum ref lects comments from external con- sultations, where practicioners told Ryerson students need to be more practice-ready. "We did an enormous amount of external consulta- tions," Saloojee says. "We went to law firms, we went to associa- tions like the Canadian Associa- tion of Black Lawyers, the South Asian Bar Association. We con- sulted, we spoke with them, we met with them. We went to inde- pendent legal professionals, we brought them into campus and sought their advice, and their input and they were actually ful- some in the advice they gave us." Next week, the fourth in- stallment of Law Times' sum- mer series on the need for a new law school in Ontario will examine how Ontario's lawyers outside of the To- ronto area are adapting to the changing legal landscape. LT NEWS No commitment from province yet Continued from page 1 Continued from page 1 'It's difficult' © 2018 Thomson Reuters Canada Limited 00252HW-92845-NK New and updated in this edition • All the new updates to the rules, related legislation, and Practice Directions Extensive synopses of all rules and recent amendments • Overview of recent developments that discusses all of the new amendments to the rules, related legislation, and Practice Directions • Over 300 new case annotations have been added to this edition, including: – Douez v. Facebook, Inc. – Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions Inc. – Canada (Procureur général) c. Thouin – Québec (Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales) c. Jodoin – Steven Nowack v. 2363523 Ontario Inc. – Delta Air Lines Inc. v. Lukács – Wellman v. TELUS Communications Company – Airia Brands Inc. v. Air Canada – Presidential MSH Corp. v. Marr, Foster & Co. 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