Law Times - Newsmakers

14 December 2016 AFTER SUPPORTERS FLOODED the Law Society of Upper Canada with feedback on the importance of continu- ing the pilot for the Law Practice Program in Ontario, it backed down and extended the program for two more years. In November, a er a debate about the controversial alternative to articling, the law society's governing body, Convocation, voted to approve recommendations to let the program's pilot continue. e law society's Professional Development and Competence Committee had originally recommended the program should be scrapped a er its third year, but it pulled an about-face a er public backlash that saw the committee receive more than 125 submissions. " e licensing system — while it is our responsibility and we're tasked with making the ultimate decisions — it aff ects every par- ticipant in the justice system," the committee's chairman, Peter Wardle, told Convocation at its November meeting. "So it's important that we listen and that we refl ect on what we're hearing." e program was initially proposed as a fi ve-year pilot, but Convocation cut it down to three years over fears it would be- come "entrenched." But the shortened program meant the committee tasked with reviewing the LPP had only so much data to evaluate it. Proponents say the program needed to be extended in order for it to be properly assessed. Bencher Gina Papageorgiou, who supported the recommen- dations to extend the LPP, said the law society's review of the pro- gram clearly shows the LPP was better than articling in certain ways. "Our obligation is to govern in the public interest and I cannot understand how we could think about moving away from a pro- gram that actually trains people — it looks at this early stage — in a better and more consistent way than articling," she said. e committee released an initial report in September, which found the LPP should end because of a perception that the pro- gram's candidates were second tier, even though there was no evi- dence to suggest the program was inferior to articling. e report was based on surveys and focus groups with LPP candidates and employers, but it recognized it did not have suf- fi cient information to compile statistics about employers' views of the program. e report found 62 per cent of candidates in the LPP's fi rst year said the program was not their fi rst choice. In the second year, 73 per cent said the LPP was not their fi rst choice. Bencher Joe Groia said there is overwhelming evidence of a per- ception that the LPP is second tier, and that its candidates have to deal with the stigma attached to it. He said the LPP harms its candidates and the public interest as well as the profession itself. "It needs to come to an end, in my respectful view, today," said Groia, who called himself part of a "somewhat small and lonely minority" that still wants to scrap the LPP. Groia argued that the LPP has also led to a large amount of unpaid placements. Opponents of the LPP have also argued that it puts too much of a fi nancial burden on both the program's candidates and articling students, whose fees have increased to cover the cost of the program. Papageorgiou argued that the law society's licensing fees lawyers should cover that cost, as there will be an increasing number of new licensees entering the profession in the future. "Why can we not as a law society say to ourselves, 'We ex- pect this additional income. We're going to now commit that we're going to take this additional money and put it into the licensing process and we're not going to overburden these law students who are graduating with a tremendous amount of debt already'?" she said. e original report also cited fi nancial sustainability and poor enrolment numbers as reasons the LPP should be scrapped. It was originally hoped the program would attract around 400 candidates each year, but there were only 440 students in the fi rst two years of the English program — administered by Ryerson University — and 28 candidates in the francophone Programme de pratique du droit, which is run by the Univer- sity of Ottawa. At its November meeting, Convocation also approved rec- ommendations to conduct further analysis of the entire licens- ing process to come up with long-term solutions to recognized problems. e committee will issue a new report concerning its fi ndings in the fi rst quarter of 2017. top stories Controversial LPP survives for two more years Supporters from law fi rms and in-house let their opinions be known to benchers about value of Law Practice Program BY ALEX ROBINSON Peter Wardle

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