Law Students & Articling Students

@duck will have some useful tips.

Has anyone taken the one year english civil law program at the University of Ottawa? I'm finishing my JD in French and looking at the LL for next year. It sounds like it is completely online, self-paced. Insights? What was the workload like? Evaluations? Were classes all pre-recorded video lectures and modules? I'd like to get an honest perspective from someone who completed it.

Hello everyone, I am very interested in attending UOttawa and I specifically want to go into employment law. Whether it be for the government or private. Does anyone have any background knowledge on how strong UOttawa is for employment law? I am set on practicing in Toronto or GTA. I’m only fluent in english. I know a lot of people talk about UofT, Queens, Western, and Osgoode for big law jobs (like mergers and other corporate sectors) but does this also apply with employment law? Thanks!

Hi everyone! Was looking for some advice for in firm week. 1) As someone who is relatively quiet in group settings, how did you stand out or contribute meaningfully at receptions/group dinners, etc? 2) When meeting people around the office, I would imagine its good to generate conversations with the people you meet. What are examples of things you spoke about? 3) I have 3 in firms going into that week, is there a need to cut off some of the firms before call day? What are some general tips you have for someone with limited in firms? 4) do you recommend networking leading up to in firms? Seems to be a grey area regarding whether you can communicate or not?

Interesting. I did notice that one firm asked me to let them know right away if I was not interviewing so they could contact other candidates. My sense on the ground here is that people who turn down interviews are in the minority, so definitely not something to hold out hope for...

There's a mute button, which doesn't prevent the person from seeing your posts but I've found it does tend to help. In the top right (on desktop, anyways) one of the menu options is "ignored users". I just fundamentally disagree with your acquaintance's impression that the faculty is right wing. For example: There's a professor who ran for the NDP in the last provincial election (https://www.airdriecityview.com/rocky-view-news/ndp-candidate-fluker-wants-to-rein-in-big-hill-springs-gravel-pit-project-5580700) Another picks fights with the UCP on basically anything in her field (health), e.g.: https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/opinion-albertas-bill-30-is-a-gateway-to-privatization-and-cronyism Another presented on behalf of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society against the Benga coal mine in its regulatory proceedings: https://www.iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/evaluations/document/136737 That's from just a cursory Google of what some of the professors I had are up to; I'm sure most of the faculty have similar activities on behalf of generally left-wing causes. Anyways - go to UCalgary if you want to work in Calgary. My classmates that remained in Calgary work in insurance/PI, tax, corporate, litigation, family, criminal, and the public sector. Of those, only the corporate & tax folks deal with O&G regularly, and that's simply due to the client base - Calgary has a lot of O&G companies, and they need legal work done. I wouldn't, for instance, call myself an "Oil & Gas tax lawyer", even if on any given day a lot of my clients are in the resource sector.

I received a Facebook ad for this: https://www.ulethbridge.ca/future-student/program/law-dual-degree-bachelor-arts-bachelor-laws I know the University of Lethbridge is a primarily undergraduate or transfer-college type university, but the fact that they would advertise this Bond University combined program and that their tuition estimator tool only shows first year (at Lethbridge, with reasonable tuition of ~$9k) is just misleading and borderline unethical in my opinion. Bond University tuition for this program is already $170k. Just though the community would find it pretty funny.

“Senior” lawyer just means everyone older than me. I’m not going grey! Get new glasses!

To be fair, "you can do that already" is a dangerous criteria to give applicants and students. I'll bet lots of law students and potential law students already engage in unauthorized practice of law by doling out confidently wrong legal advice! But assuming some self-awareness and basic knowledge of what legal advice is, then yes, I agree.

Taking the last part first since it was actually in response to me. Rags origin story is a fine story to pick, I think, it just isn’t especially unique. Lots of folks are trying to get into law school from some variation of a shitty starting point. What you’ll find in law school is that there are people with absolutely astoundingly rough starts who still were A students, and you can assume some others didn’t make it in. I’m not saying this to be dismissive of whatever mountain you climbed, I’m just stating the reality that moderately few people get into good law schools and so the bar for when a rags-and-up story counts as so special as to move a needle is very high. On the other end of that spectrum, we used to see people ask if their (frankly impressive, to me) athletic accomplishments counted, and I’d always say I knew a world class dancer and two Olympians who went to law school, so the bar for impressive enough to move the needle is freakishly high. All of which is to say, how well you write is what needs to be the focus here if you’re hoping to bump your odds. Most lawyers need to have that skill, whereas most don’t need to be Olympians or have come from a certain socioeconomic class, so it goes a long way. Focus on trying to write well and demonstrating persuasive skill and you’ll have checked the box. To return to the first paragraph… I think I saw you mention somewhere that you’re above median applicant age. I don’t know what kind of work you’ve done in the past, but one thing you will find one day as a lawyer is that the amorphous type of “who the fuck knows” stress of becoming a professional is way closer to lawyer stress than anything academic is. This is usually a point more acutely frustrating to kids who went straight from high school to law, because their whole line of accomplishments was like school stress. Being a lawyer is often like being dropped in a lake where you can’t see the shore and just having to figure it out as best you can without letting the fear of drowning waste energy. The reason you see so many commenters here giving what sounds more like personality advice is because we’ve all seen it - dozens of people with the intellect to do the job (frankly, I don’t think the floor is that high), but who flame out quickly because they don’t acquire the disposition needed. I’m a biglaw M&A guy and have seen more junior associates than I can count over the years. A small percentage just don’t have the brain power to handle it. A significant number just don’t have the patience, stress management, comfort in the unknown, calm, energy, etc to make it. I’m not your psychoanalyst so I don’t know where you fall on this, but given you’re talking about and evidencing stress over a desire to get to certainty on an inherently uncertain thing, I just wanted to flag to you that refining your disposition and approach to problems is 90% of the battle once the floor level stats are out of the way.

Let's keep this simple. Anything that isn't legal work, where a lawyer is being a lawyer, is stuff you can already do. Reading a complex document, navigating a bureaucracy, telling someone who can't do that for themselves how to get it done? Sure. But you can do that already, presumably. Anything that requires the credential of having attended law school and being licensed to practice law...you've probably crossed that line.

Just to be clear because multiple people seized on it, my initial post was written very casually, and thus might have given the wrong impression. I shouldn't have said "negotiating" the contact/loan. When I mentioned buying a car, I was thinking of a specific situation I myself wound up in years ago where a sketchy used car lot (which shortly there after went out of business and had the owner running from charges) had constructed deceptively predatory contracts. I, having never handled a loan contract before, knowing my lack of credit limited my options, and being young and naive, thought they all sounded reasonable at the time and signed the thing, and for years I found myself wishing I had someone who knew what they were doing to look that over and point out the things I didn't understand. But in retrospect, I think that fits well under what others have said about this not really requiring acting as a lawyer as even now I feel far more equipped to do that than I did at that age, and while having more knowledge of contract law would certainly help, it makes sense that identifying yourself as, and proceding as, a lawyer wouldn't really be necessary. In hindsight, it was a badly chosen example on my part.

But again, negotiating a contract or a loan can mean a whole spectrum of different things. Ordinary people negotiate these things every day without the help of a lawyer. There's lots of help you can provide without providing legal advice or holding yourself out as representing someone. You can flag things for someone to think about, ask questions about what they think they're getting into, give them information sources to look at, or tell them when they really need a lawyer to help them. All of those fall short of legal advice*. *most of the time, but individual circumstances vary! And never tell someone that their issue is simple and they don't need a lawyer. That's legal advice and is a recipe for getting sued or an LSO complaint...

I should be more specific. I know of 1 person who ended up at the firm they did not get an ITC from. I know of a couple other people who got calls on call day without receiving an ITC from the firm. What I understand is that firms develop a waitlist of their next top candidates in case some of their offers are turned down due to a student having too many to fit in their schedule, or because they received a job offer in the Calgary or Toronto recruit and drop out of the Vancouver recruit.

1. Not to state the obvious, but one person can't unilaterally "get into fights" and "waste other people's time." 2. I've got enough people on my ass already, thanks. If you don't have anything constructive or on-topic to say, feel free to stay out of it, lest *I* waste *your* time.