Western vs Queens

[Eathwens]

Hello, I'm currently thinking about Western vs Queens as a place for law school. Im making a list trying to measure them up so literally any comment about the schools help. I haven't exactly found out what type of law I want to do but I want to keep a foot open for International opportunities or International Law. Anything helps. 

Edited February 26, 2022 by Eathwens

[Darth Vader]

18 minutes ago, Eathwens said:

Hello, I'm currently thinking about Western vs Queens as a place for law school. Im making a list trying to measure them up so literally any comment about the schools help. I haven't exactly found out what type of law I want to do but I want to keep a foot open for International opportunities or International Law. Anything helps. 

Western seems to have a business law focus, while Queen's is a little more broad in terms of also focusing on areas like criminal, family, and labour and employment. Most people from Canadian law schools, let alone Western and Queen's, will not pursue an international law career — unless that career involved Big Law, international trade, and international tax. A lot of prospective law students seem to go into law school with big dreams about imitating a career like Amal Clooney, but you have to be a superstar academically and do your LLM, PhD, or SJD at an ivy league or Oxbridge tier school to have a chance at this kind of career. It would also be ideal if you went to a school like U of T, Osgoode, McGill or UBC as a start. 

When making this decision, you need to have a realistic perspective on the kind of jobs available to you. Mostly everyone knows about the 1L and 2L OCI processes. 90% of jobs in these recruits are with corporate employers. In Ontario, the articling recruit consists of mostly personal injury and insurance defence firms, with a handful of labour and employment firms mixed in. There are some MAG jobs primarily in criminal law as well. 

Are you interested in Big Law or business law generally or intellectual property law? That is really the only reason you may consider choosing Western over Queen's. 

Edited February 26, 2022 by Darth Vader

[Eathwens]

42 minutes ago, Darth Vader said:

Western seems to have a business law focus, while Queen's is a little more broad in terms of also focusing on areas like criminal, family, and labour and employment. Most people from Canadian law schools, let alone Western and Queen's, will not pursue an international law career — unless that career involved Big Law, international trade, and international tax. A lot of prospective law students seem to go into law school with big dreams about imitating a career like Amal Clooney, but you have to be a superstar academically and do your LLM, PhD, or SJD at an ivy league or Oxbridge tier school to have a chance at this kind of career. It would also be ideal if you went to a school like U of T, Osgoode, McGill or UBC as a start. 

When making this decision, you need to have a realistic perspective on the kind of jobs available to you. Mostly everyone knows about the 1L and 2L OCI processes. 90% of jobs in these recruits are with corporate employers. In Ontario, the articling recruit consists of mostly personal injury and insurance defence firms, with a handful of labour and employment firms mixed in. There are some MAG jobs primarily in criminal law as well. 

Are you interested in Big Law or business law generally or intellectual property law? That is really the only reason you may consider choosing Western over Queen's. 

Fair points allow me to specify. I think I have interest in some sort of business law or intellectual property if not that property or estates. I currently take criminology and don't think I would want to be a criminal lawyer don't know how I will react to first year courses.[I know for certain im not doing family law or divorce though]. 

Regarding international opportunities I don't aim to do some sort of "international rights law" rather the jobs you mentioned big law, international trade, and international tax.