My story: when you first-choiced firm did not get back to you in a timely manner

[easttowest]

Isn’t the matching system fraught with its own set of peculiarities and anxieties? Though that may just be because people have to move someplace they never planned to.

[Turtles]

26 minutes ago, easttowest said:

Isn’t the matching system fraught with its own set of peculiarities and anxieties? Though that may just be because people have to move someplace they never planned to.

Which I assume is less of a concern for the Toronto or Vancouver recruits since they are regional in nature and not even provincial let alone national?

[easttowest]

There may be other concerns; I don’t know. I do know I’ve never heard rave reviews about that system.

Again, I don’t think you can handwave away class composition concerns as easy to overcome. Nor do I think you’d eradicate the whole first choice thing. I could see it getting worse as firms tried to get some certainty for their ranking. 
 

 

 

[helloall]

Why not drop the whole system and does what NY does?

[Turtles]

11 minutes ago, helloall said:

Why not drop the whole system and does what NY does?

There are some interesting thoughts from Rashabon on this or a previous thread. But if we're going to start looking at how things are done in NYC, let's start by asking whether articling should even still be a thing. With the rise of IPC (now both at Lakehead and Ryerson) and the growth of the LPP, it's worth asking whether there are other ways to ensure students learn/demonstrate enough practical skills before being called.   

[CleanHands]

8 minutes ago, Turtles said:

There are some interesting thoughts from Rashabon on this or a previous thread. But if we're going to start looking at how things are done in NYC, let's start by asking whether articling should even still be a thing. With the rise of IPC (now both at Lakehead and Ryerson) and the growth of the LPP, it's worth asking whether there are other ways to ensure students learn/demonstrate enough practical skills before being called.   

Ryerson's and Lakehead's IPC programs are jokes and any student who gets decent clinical experience and/or summer law jobs from any school will get superior practical experience. Let's not pretend those schools are doing anything cutting edge.

With that said articling has value while JD programs being three years long and consisting of mostly academic/theoretical coursework is absurd. If we're going to talk about how to reform legal training/education/qualifications, the degree programs are a way more obvious target in need of dramatic improvement than the articling system. JDs are three years of actual and opportunity cost providing almost no value.

[123]

1 minute ago, CleanHands said:

With that said articling has value while JD programs being three years long and consisting of mostly academic/theoretical coursework is absurd. If we're going to talk about how to reform legal training/education/qualifications, the degree programs are a way more obvious target in need of dramatic improvement than the articling system. JDs are three years of actual and opportunity cost providing almost no value.

I found that law school was helpful for the first year and parts of the second year. There were about twelve months of classes where I could still feel myself learning legal thinking and reasoning, and I think I benefited from doing that before working on many cases. Some might need less time -- I'm not the quickest learner. After a point though, the returns from in-class instruction started diminishing pretty quickly, and the real value was in clinics and extracurriculars.

The practical stuff was pretty valuable. But aside from the for-credit clinic, where I did get lots of great instruction, I was basically paying 9k per semester to volunteer for the last half of law school. I would have preferred that law school be shorter by a year, and I could've just done that on my own. But I assume universities see it differently, and are happy to lock each cohort into another year of tuition fees.

[QueensDenning]

I for one am gaining absolutely nothing from this last year of law school. But it's cool to be able to party stress free and funded by a fat line of credit. Not sure I'd rather head straight into articling after 2L, all things considered. 

[CleanHands]

9 minutes ago, realpseudonym said:

I found that law school was helpful for the first year and parts of the second year. There were about twelve months of classes where I could still feel myself learning legal thinking and reasoning, and I think I benefited from doing that before working on many cases. Some might need less time -- I'm not the quickest learner. After a point though, the returns from in-class instruction started diminishing pretty quickly, and the real value was in clinics and extracurriculars.

The practical stuff was pretty valuable. But aside from the for-credit clinic, where I did get lots of great instruction, I was basically paying 9k per semester to volunteer for the last half of law school. I would have preferred that law school be shorter by a year, and I could've just done that on my own. But I assume universities see it differently, and are happy to lock each cohort into another year of tuition fees.

1L makes sense to provide a basic black-letter law foundation for everyone and to sort talent for employers. There is literally no justifiable purpose for JD programs beyond that.

I did enjoy my 2L clinical experiences more than anything else in law school but I shouldn't have had to be enrolled in law school to do some volunteering.

[helloall]

I support removing articling, because it effectively fucks over many Canadian stronger law graduates. In your first year out of school, instead of working long hours and getting yelled at for your mistakes for $130K starting, you're getting the same deal for $100K annualized AND you're not guaranteed to get hired back? Incredible. While in NY, if you're guaranteed market bonuses, you're getting paid $235K. Plus, first-years getting laid off at the big firms is considered a no-no, so you don't have to worry about finding a new job immediately as you started off your career.

In general, I think Canadian law students are getting fucked over a lot.

It's incredible reading about how big of a deal first-choice language is, or how cancelling an interview, let alone reneging, can damage your career before it even starts. Meanwhile, American firms don't care. It's incredible what's considered taboo to talk about, which is why so many students blindly pick firms and practice areas. In contrast, the Americans are obsessed with rankings and planning out their career for strategic exit opportunities. Yes, they're neurotic, but it seems like the Canadian law school culture is just completely aloof. Its incredible that Canadian firms don't typically negotiate bonuses for clerkships or advanced degrees, nor provide some non-monetary incentives to top students. Meanwhile, there are American firms willing to shell out $450,000 signing bonuses for SCOTUS clerks. It's a complete cop out to say "oh yeah, Canadian firms just can't afford it :(" when the likes of Polsinelli - which pays under the market - can provide bonuses for clerkships and advanced degrees, despite their lower revenue, RPL, and PPEP than Osler.

[Turtles]

33 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

Ryerson's and Lakehead's IPC programs are jokes and any student who gets decent clinical experience and/or summer law jobs from any school will get superior practical experience. Let's not pretend those schools are doing anything cutting edge.

With that said articling has value while JD programs being three years long and consisting of mostly academic/theoretical coursework is absurd. If we're going to talk about how to reform legal training/education/qualifications, the degree programs are a way more obvious target in need of dramatic improvement than the articling system. JDs are three years of actual and opportunity cost providing almost no value.

Maybe, but at least the Law Society thinks the IPC and LPP are sufficient, which is the point. If the Law Society's expectation is that you only need to gain enough competency through articles to hit a certain threshold to be competent enough to be called to the bar, and that threshold can likewise be satisfied by someone who just did the IPC or LPP, then there must be other ways to hit that threshold by reworking the licensing process and/or law school curriculum rather than retaining the articling system. 

I will graduate having held a 1L and 2L summer job in a big firm, in addition to spending a year in a clinic. None of that contributes anything to my competency in the eyes of the Law Society, which I can completely understand if the threshold is intended to be high, but spending 4 months in a placement under the LPP or a few months under the IPC would satisfy the whole articling requirement. (One could argue the experience of a 1L or 2L summer student is not comparable to working as an articling student, which could very well be true for some or even most firms, but I'd love to hear about substantive differences between a 1L summer at a seven sister firm vs a typical LPP placement that enable the latter to become competent and the former in need of a full articling term to become competent.)

[CleanHands]

12 minutes ago, Turtles said:

-Snip-

It is incredibly apparent that the only reason the LSO deemed the IPC sufficient for articling exemption was to prevent the creation of TMU's law program from causing a crisis-level shortage of articling positions relative to Ontario law graduates. No serious person can sincerely believe that this has anything to do with reaching some objective standard of competency.

Edited November 15, 2022 by CleanHands

[123]

The LPP is a way to get people, who otherwise probably wouldn't be licensed, to become fees-paying members to the LSO for decades. Especially since the LSO dumped the LPP costs on other licensing candidates, it's a tidy bit of business for them. If I could add hundreds of thousands in revenue that easily, I'd probably be convinced that the candidates were competent too.

It's possible I'm getting a titch cynical though. A side-effect of practicing administrative law, I believe.

[KOMODO]

29 minutes ago, helloall said:

I support removing articling, because it effectively fucks over many Canadian stronger law graduates. In your first year out of school, instead of working long hours and getting yelled at for your mistakes for $130K starting, you're getting the same deal for $100K annualized AND you're not guaranteed to get hired back? Incredible. While in NY, if you're guaranteed market bonuses, you're getting paid $235K. Plus, first-years getting laid off at the big firms is considered a no-no, so you don't have to worry about finding a new job immediately as you started off your career.

In general, I think Canadian law students are getting fucked over a lot.

It's incredible reading about how big of a deal first-choice language is, or how cancelling an interview, let alone reneging, can damage your career before it even starts. Meanwhile, American firms don't care. It's incredible what's considered taboo to talk about, which is why so many students blindly pick firms and practice areas. In contrast, the Americans are obsessed with rankings and planning out their career for strategic exit opportunities. Yes, they're neurotic, but it seems like the Canadian law school culture is just completely aloof. Its incredible that Canadian firms don't typically negotiate bonuses for clerkships or advanced degrees, nor provide some non-monetary incentives to top students. Meanwhile, there are American firms willing to shell out $450,000 signing bonuses for SCOTUS clerks. It's a complete cop out to say "oh yeah, Canadian firms just can't afford it :(" when the likes of Polsinelli - which pays under the market - can provide bonuses for clerkships and advanced degrees, despite their lower revenue, RPL, and PPEP than Osler.

If you think things are so much better in the States, then you're free to go there. Personally I prefer the Canadian way, or at least recognize its validity, for most of the items you mentioned above.

Articling is a protective year that allows students to receive mentorship and oversight that isn't available once they're fully licensed. You can make mistakes before you're liable for them. Also not sure why you think that articling being eliminated would cause first year out of school salaries to increase, I think it would be far more likely that the comp for first years would just move to the articling amount, prorated for the longer year if the period changed. Salaries and bonuses are dictated by market forces, and the market in Toronto is just not able to support the same compensation as the market in NYC, nor do the people in this market expect it to match American rates. Also, why do you think that law firms should spend millions of dollars on bonuses for people who haven't even started working yet, rather than allocating those resources to the associates who have been putting in hours at the firm? The money has to come from somewhere and honestly I'm glad we don't have to waste huge sums on one-time attraction prizes for people who did well in law school and may not even perform well in practice.

[123]

3 minutes ago, KOMODO said:

Articling is a protective year that allows students to receive mentorship and oversight that isn't available once they're fully licensed. You can make mistakes before you're liable for them.

I think students consistently underrate how valuable this is for them.

[BlockedQuebecois]

Yeah, the LPP (and expansion of the IPC to TMU, which as noted was done to prevent a massive articling process) are both shameless abdications of the LSO’s obligation to ensure competence in order to appease the low performing law students who are otherwise literally unemployable (and in many instances, so unemployable that they could not find unpaid articles).

The worst part of that appeasement is that it was so obviously catering to the lowest common denominator that the LSO couldn’t convince the profession to pay for it, so now everyone with articles has to pay an additional couple of grand in order to subsidize the remedial education of their peers.

There are good candidates in the LPP every year, as demonstrated by the fact that some good firms are offering placements in order to scoop up talent that fell through the cracks (often for racial reasons) on the cheap. But the program shouldn’t exist. 

I’ll disagree with @CleanHands with regards to Lakehead’s IPC, which I think was genuinely intended to result in better access to justice in Northern Ontario. 

Edited November 15, 2022 by BlockedQuebecois

[easttowest]

It’s not at all incredible to me that firms that don’t have to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives and signing bonuses, don’t.

Obviously I wish they did, but look at the state of this forum post-recruit to see why they’ll never have to for a while, if ever. 

[KOMODO]

To add to my previous comment - I had to look up Polsinelli, because I hadn't heard of it before - apparently profits per equity partner were $1.4M US in 2021, which I believe would vastly exceed many Bay Street firms. Even for what someone is arguing is a lower-paying/lower-tier firm, the market is just a different beast.

[CleanHands]

Just now, realpseudonym said:

I think students consistently underrate how valuable this is for them.

I once saw a reddit comment thread where a Canadian lawyer explained what articling was to a bunch of American lawyers and overwhelmingly there were a bunch of highly upvoted responses from the US lawyers saying this sounded very useful and like a much better system than the US where they received no training or mentorship and were thrown right into the fire, of course for Canadian lawyers to respond derisively complaining about their articling pay and how it delayed their careers by a year. lol

[LMP]

1 minute ago, easttowest said:

It’s not at all incredible to me that firms that don’t have to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives and signing bonuses, don’t.

Obviously I wish they did, but look at the state of this forum post-recruit to see why they’ll never have to for a while, if ever. 

It doesn't shock me either, but I don't think NYC firms have to pay out those incentives either. 

If anything they have a larger labour pool to draw from and I can't imagine the work they're doing is inherently more complex just because it is south of the border. It would seem like they could land the same quality of talent with their base salary alone.

Me point being that there seems to be some other factor that I'm missing to explain the discrepancy. 

[easttowest]

9 minutes ago, LMP said:

It doesn't shock me either, but I don't think NYC firms have to pay out those incentives either. 

If anything they have a larger labour pool to draw from and I can't imagine the work they're doing is inherently more complex just because it is south of the border. It would seem like they could land the same quality of talent with their base salary alone.

Me point being that there seems to be some other factor that I'm missing to explain the discrepancy. 

All good points that I don’t know the answers to. I wish that other factor would move north, but can’t see it happening any time soon. 
 

 

[Conge]

10 minutes ago, LMP said:

It doesn't shock me either, but I don't think NYC firms have to pay out those incentives either. 

If anything they have a larger labour pool to draw from and I can't imagine the work they're doing is inherently more complex just because it is south of the border. It would seem like they could land the same quality of talent with their base salary alone.

Me point being that there seems to be some other factor that I'm missing to explain the discrepancy. 

It's just supply and demand, IMHO. The demand for smart, hard-working, and easy to work with associates is very high. And the supply may not be as high as you think: NYC firms are generally only looking at candidates from certain schools in the US.

[CleanHands]

Average students at law schools with median admit stats of 3.7 GPAs and 160 LSATs routinely land Bay Street BigLaw jobs.

That is not true of major NYC firms. lol

[LMP]

34 minutes ago, Conge said:

It's just supply and demand, IMHO. The demand for smart, hard-working, and easy to work with associates is very high. And the supply may not be as high as you think: NYC firms are generally only looking at candidates from certain schools in the US.

For sure, but there are graduates from T-14 US schools who want NYC big law but don't get it. 

Then there are students in the top percentile of the still very competitive schools in the top 30. 

I just don't see why NYC firms are brawling for the top 5% when they could have their pick of the top 10%. 

And if there is a reason, why don't we see it replicated here in Canada? 

[Ohshmagoda]

1 hour ago, LMP said:

And if there is a reason, why don't we see it replicated here in Canada? 

I don’t have data to support this, but I think it’s a function of the class/status dynamics in the states. It strikes me that prestige/status (i.e. clerkships, Ivy League schools, etc.) are more important socially/culturally/professionally than up in Canada. Being able to get the job done is valuable, but much less valuable than the value of networks and social capital, etc.