Law Times

Law Times • sepTember 3, 2018 Page 5 www.lawtimesnews.com No decision yet from province on Ryerson Lakehead and Ryerson trying to chart different path BY ANITA BALAKRISHNAN Law Times W hen Hayley Yorke was deciding be- tween the Univer- sity of Ottawa law school and the then-new law program at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., she chose Lakehead even though it seemed like the underdog. "I think all of the students are aware that LU is an underdog. We don't have a huge group of alumni or, for example, resourc- es for a national moot team. But you have to start somewhere, and we're in an articling crisis, and LU is doing things differ- ently," says Yorke, now working at O'Neill Associates, a boutique human resource, labour and employment firm in Thunder Bay. She expects to be called to the bar in September. Lakehead law graduates start working sooner than the aver- age Ontario law student thanks to Integrated Practice Curricu- lum, a practical skills and work placement-based curriculum that stands in for articling in the licensure process. Students take traditional law school classes, but they are also required to complete skills- based assessments such as oral advocacy, written advocacy, writing factums, mock motions and participating in mock trials. Some courses also require expe- riential learning, such as Lake- head's Aboriginal Perspective, which requires 36 hours of field- work. The program is capped by a work placement program for four months. A new crop of students will soon make a similar choice be- tween established programs and a proposed new one: Ryerson University is aiming to open a brand-new law school in 2020, the first in the Toronto area in more than a century. Ryerson's proposed curricu- lum to the Federation of Law So- cieties of Canada, which grants approval for new law schools, also includes a third-year work placement program, but it does not stand in for articling in the licensure process. The Ryerson law school must get program approval from the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, says Anver Saloojee, dean of record for Ryerson. It is the last step of the external approval process. Dur- ing that process, which could last six to nine months, the school will also likely find out its level of provincial funding. The school is asking for $5,700 per student, amounting to a little more than $2.3 million, "assuming a steady state enrolment across all three years of study of about 410 full- time equivalent students." Lakehead's most recent fund- ing was $5,500 with 279 basic income units, a spokesman said. BIUs are funding units defined by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. Ryerson's graduates will en- ter an increasingly competitive workforce — there is expected to be 1.6 new licensed lawyers for every one practising position in Ontario by 2025, according to a projection by the Higher Educa- tion Quality Council of Ontario. "[Ryerson is] going to have some similar challenges: build- ing a faculty of professors, cre- ating a positive student culture, all those types of things," says Duncan Macgillivray, a per- sonal injury lawyer who teaches insurance law at Lakehead and works with students in his role as partner at boutique Thunder Bay firm White Macgillivray Lester LLP. "I think one different challenge is that you will have a bunch more students trying to break into the Toronto market, which I think is saturated." Yorke says she isn't worried about Lakehead students com- peting with Ryerson graduates for jobs. "I don't think we are even on their radar," she says. "You're so far away from your family and everything," Yorke says of the idea that Toronto-raised stu- dents at Ryerson would choose to practise in the north. "Firms will probably see that you came from southern Ontario; they are going to want people who want to stay in the north." About 38 per cent of third- year students at Lakehead's law program do their work place- ment at a firm in northwestern Ontario, north of and includ- ing Sudbury, says Hope Buset, director of Student Services and Skills at the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead. Another nine per cent of Lakehead third- year students work in northeast- ern Ontario, while 11 per cent work in small towns south of Sudbury and four per cent work in medium-sized towns south of Sudbury, leaving the remaining 18 per cent practising in the gen- eral Toronto area. Lawyers outside of the To- ronto area are more likely to be sole practitioners. About 50 per cent of Ontario's lawyers are out- side the Toronto area, according to statistics from the Law Soci- ety of Ontario. But 58 per cent of lawyers outside of the Toronto area are labelled sole practitioner (although it includes sole owners who employ other licensees). The different legal needs law graduates are expected to address in Toronto and Thunder Bay are highlighted by a provincial re- port called the "Strategic Man- date Agreement," released by the government for each university when the Liberals were in power in Ontario. The report is de- signed to be relevant from 2017 to 2020. The purpose of the report is to outline "the role the University currently performs in Ontario's postsecondary education system and how each school will help drive 'government priorities.'" It is "not intended to capture all decisions and issues in the post- secondary education system, as many will be addressed through the Ministry's policies and stan- dard processes," the report says. Of Ryerson's proposal, the strategic mandate says it is "an innovative law program that enhances access to justice for Canadians and responds to the present and future needs of users of legal services and to the needs of society and the profession." But it also says, "While the ministry acknowledges the aspi- rations of Ryerson University in this regard, at this time the min- istry will not support a new Law School in Ontario for operating funding consideration." A ministry spokeswoman said that the agreement was written during the Liberal ad- ministration and that the cur- rent provincial government has not made a decision on the Ryer- son law school. The SMA for Lakehead Uni- versity mainly mentions the law school in terms of Lakehead University Community Le- gal Services, a student legal aid clinic. The SMA report calls the clinic "an exciting way for Lake- head students to have a dynamic, hands-on learning experience, while at the same time provid- ing a much-needed service to the Thunder Bay community." Lakehead's law program has had its own struggles. The pre- vious dean, Angelique Eagle- Woman, resigned this year af- ter two "hectic" years, alleging systemic racism and "challenges both inside the law school and from the senior administration," she told Canadian Lawyer. A Lakehead spokesman says the search for a new dean is "well underway." Saloojee thinks students at Ryerson will have a leg up in finding jobs, even though the Law Society of Ontario's May report to Convocation on licen- sure says that only 10 per cent of Ontario law firms offer articling placements. "I think our curricular focus will position our students in a way that they can both engage in the labour market and, we believe, also become potential employers and creators of job opportunities down the line as well. A lot of the data shows that people coming out of primary school and high school will be entering jobs that they can't even conceive of today. We hope our students will be on the cutting edge of creating those kinds of jobs as well," Saloojee says. Brigid Wilkinson practises at Evans Bragagnolo & Sullivan LLP in Haileybury, Ont. and is the Federation of Ontario Law Associations' northeast regional representative. She says that en- trepreneurialism — another fo- cus of the Ryerson program — is more important than students realize, whether they are in a small town or big city. "I find that when people go to law school they have a very specific idea of what they want to do and that changes once they hit law school. When I worked on Bay Street, I just did a par- ticular type of litigation. Here, if you were a litigation lawyer, you would do everything. You would do contracts, you would do em- ployment, some family, some criminal," Wilkinson says. "The entrepreneurial spirit is certain- ly required." This is the fourth and final part in a series on the proposal for a law school at Ryerson University. To read the other three parts of the series, please see lawtimesnews.com. LT NEWS Hayley Yorke says she isn't worried about Lakehead law students competing with potential Ryerson graduates for jobs. Untitled-1 1 2018-06-28 12:05 PM

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