International Human Rights Law Inquiry

[writeandread]

Hello! I'm an applicant and I'm trying to understand how the legal world works. My first question is which law school in Ontario is best for International Human Rights? Bouncing off of that, does the law school I go to matter for the area of law I want to practice? And, how does one create a pathway for themselves to end up practicing IHR Law by starting in Canada? Do I look for firms that practice this specific area, do I start in government, or do I create a pathway for myself? 

Any insight from practicing lawyers is of great help, thank you! 

[BlockedQuebecois]

25 minutes ago, writeandread said:

My first question is which law school in Ontario is best for International Human Rights?

Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, or Panthéon-Assas.

26 minutes ago, writeandread said:

Bouncing off of that, does the law school I go to matter for the area of law I want to practice?

A little bit, unless you want to practice International Human Rights law, in which case, yes.

26 minutes ago, writeandread said:

And, how does one create a pathway for themselves to end up practicing IHR Law by starting in Canada?

By booking a flight to the Netherlands. 

 

Not to crush your dreams, but if you want to be an international human rights lawyer, the most straightforward way to get there (assuming you have the brains for it and are fluent in multiple languages) is to move to Europe and read law at one of the elite European universities before completing graduate studies in the field at other elite universities in Europe or the United States. 

[CleanHands]

37 minutes ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

Not to crush your dreams

Half of applicants to Canadian law schools want to be international human rights lawyers or legal academics and those dreams absolutely need to be crushed as early as possible, before they end up with $100k in debt doing real estate conveyancing at a mid-sized firm and wondering what happened.

I want to be sympathetic but I've lost track of how many users posted about such ambitions at the applicant stage and then a year later posted "I have a B- 1L average at Windsor, how screwed am I?"

Edited February 26 by CleanHands

[goodisgood]

On one hand it's important to be realistic, but on the other I do know some lawyers who practice international human rights who did their JDs in Ontario and still get to work on some pretty important cases that go up to the SCC or beyond. It's not common but it is doable. 

Try searching on LinkedIn and Google for some actual practitioners that you can schedule coffee chats with. They will likely reinforce what the other posters here have said to some degree but may offer a more balanced opinion. Be aware that much of what has been mentioned already is true, and was reflected in what I was told by profs and practitioners while I was considering practicing IHRL or Refugee law. For example, you're going to earn less, jobs are going to be less common, and you may tend to work with less sophisticated clients. That said, it can be important work and having people who are at least considering practicing in non-business law areas is important. 

Also look up topics here on practicing international law, there are plenty. There are indeed lots of misguided people who have this very wistful idea of what international law looks like and it is most likely not going to look like what you're picturing in your head. 

[WiseGhost]

Not to pile on, but you don't know whether you actually want to practice international human rights law, unless you somehow have extensive experience in the area that you have not written about in your post. 

I thought I knew what I wanted to do at the start of law school -- that lasted about three weeks. Almost everyone changes their mind about the type of law that they want to practice. 

[writeandread]

Why is everyone so negative about IHR? I need to know the details behind such a response, is it due to the lack of opportunities present or the failure of attempts? What is the exact issue? Perhaps it's because people give up because it doesn't pay well? 

3 minutes ago, goodisgood said:

On one hand it's important to be realistic, but on the other I do know some lawyers who practice international human rights who did their JDs in Ontario and still get to work on some pretty important cases that go up to the SCC or beyond. It's not common but it is doable. 

Thank you for this response. I feel as though a lot of people tend to dismiss this area of practice altogether because it's much tougher, but I think anything is possible. Even if it means making a smaller impact, rather than on a larger scale. You can be a realist but also opportunistic. 

[Diplock]

Here's some advice. If someone who doesn't know anything about actual legal practice says they want to practice International Human Rights, what they are really saying is they want a career where they (a) are prominent and important, (b) get to travel the world, and (c) help poor and marginalized people with serious legal problems.

Given that you are very unlikely to end up in your dream career where someone asks you to write a legal brief about what's going on in Gaza, and promises to fly you to the Hague and put your name in the newspaper for doing it, you should probably narrow things down slightly.

Between your dreams of being prominent and important, traveling the world, and helping marginalized people with serious legal problems, pick two. Then you'll probably have a more realistic idea of what your future might look like.

There's an analogy here dating, btw, (smart, sane, hot - pick two) but it's mainly unintentional.

[CleanHands]

6 minutes ago, writeandread said:

Perhaps it's because people give up because it doesn't pay well? 

🤦‍♂️

[MyWifesBoyfriend]

5 minutes ago, writeandread said:

Why is everyone so negative about IHR?

No one here is being negative. People are just trying to disabuse you of the notion that human rights law entails travelling between the Hague and Brussels in an armored limousine while you hammer out international agreements. 

Realistically, you'll be working with unsophisticated clients through a Human Rights Tribunal (The HRTO if you're in Ontario). 

Disclaimer: Not a lawyer, and just realized which sub-forum we're in. 

Edited February 26 by MyWifesBoyfriend

[Diplock]

2 minutes ago, writeandread said:

Why is everyone so negative about IHR? I need to know the details behind such a response, is it due to the lack of opportunities present or the failure of attempts? What is the exact issue? Perhaps it's because people give up because it doesn't pay well?

Actual answer? Because it's arrogant as all hell. It's like a German guy sitting somewhere in a classroom saying "hey, I heard that in Canada they are treating their Indigenous people really badly - where do I go to school in Germany to get the kind of education that will ensure someone will ship me to Canada one day so I can use my training in a completely unrelated legal system to fix problems I currently know nothing about."

Guess what, Canada does have serious issues and someone bloody needs to be paying attention to them. We have lawyers trained in Indigenous law to do that. You want to do something about what's happening in Gaza, just to continue with that example? I'm sure you do. You know they have, actual Palestinian lawyers and stuff, right? Ones that speak the language and grew up there? Lots of Israeli lawyers too. What the heck would they need some Canadian to get on a plane and teach them what's what? If that Canadian is Louise Arbour, maybe. Not some recentish grad from a domestic law school. The same will be true of every other place you can imagine. They have lawyers there too, you know.

The thing with law as opposed to medicine, for example, is that the qualification is jurisdictional. If someone said they want to become a surgeon and go around the world helping child amputees in war zones that would make sense. Because a doctor is a doctor. A limb in a limb. And healthcare speaks all languages. Meanwhile, law IS language. So to begin with, your ability to function anywhere else is only as good as your ability to fully speak the language. And even once you've got that, you have no foundation in the legal system, just some generalized training in broad terms. You're literally no more use in most places in the world than someone trained at a German law school, in German, would be in parsing our obligations to Indigenous Canadians.

You want to pursue a career internationally, more power to you. But it doesn't make me think you're a better person than the next law student - it makes me think you're more interested in sight-seeing than in practicing law. A license to practice law is a super power that helps you to assist the poor and the powerless. But your super power has a weakness. It ends when you cross the border and leave Canada. You turn into a pumpkin with no magical powers at all other than the abstract value of some broad education.

That's it. You can say I'm wrong and maybe I am. But that's why "International Human Rights" pisses people off so much. You're not like a doctor going to another country to cure preventable blindness. You're a doctor who could be curing preventable blindness if you just stayed in one place, who prefers to go on a sight-seeing tour to somewhere more interesting, where you can't operate on anyone at all because your hands don't work there.

Anyway, good luck.

 

[BHC1]

To be fair, there is a ton of international human rights legal work out there. But it’s the kind of unsafe, dirty, and poorly compensated work less than 1% of the people in OP’s circumstance are willing to do. The type of work where you’ll spend your entire career unrecognized, spending your retirement in near poverty. The lawyers assisting refugees on the Southern US border on a donation/barter basis come to mind. Even the better compensated positions at the UN will pay you a fraction of what you can make defending insurance car accidents anywhere in Canada. So it’s possible OP - but you probably aren’t going to be willing to do it. 

[Jaggers]

If you're arguing cases at the SCC, you probably aren't an international human rights lawyer. You may be a very good domestic human rights lawyer, and you may even try to rely on some international instruments to get the SCC to see domestic law your way, but the SCC doesn't do international human rights law.

Justice Arbour went to UdM if that's the path you're thinking of following!

[LMP]

I always dread posts like this. A level of ignorance is totally excusable among applicants and even law students and I think posting here is a great way to do direct research, that isn't the part that gets me. Rather, it is when people supposedly seeking information and knowledge spurn the advice of actual practicing lawyers because it doesn't support their priors! 

Now I don't think OP is doing that (yet), but I would caution them and anyone else at their stage who is reading threads like this to make the best use of the information they are being given. You've got an array of lawyers from different practice areas giving pretty uniform advice. Might be worthwhile to think on it a bit. 

[CleanHands]

7 minutes ago, LMP said:

Now I don't think OP is doing that (yet)

I mean, they did. They received replies telling them that this was a very niche and highly selective practice area, and they responded with "are people down on international human rights law because people leave the practice area because it doesn't pay well enough?"

[LMP]

6 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

I mean, they did. They received replies telling them that this was a very niche and highly selective practice area, and they responded with "are people down on international human rights law because people leave the practice area because it doesn't pay well enough?"

You may be right! But I'm hopeful OP can learn from the response that followed that post. Sometimes it takes a little extra jostling to shake a long held notion. 

[writeandread]

34 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

I mean, they did. They received replies telling them that this was a very niche and highly selective practice area, and they responded with "are people down on international human rights law because people leave the practice area because it doesn't pay well enough?"

I am not here to argue with actual practicing lawyers, I am simply looking for advice on how to navigate such a complex system. That being said, the initial response I always get when I ask about human rights law from a person who has had a previous interest in it, says that it doesn't pay the bills or the debt, nor are they able to make a significant impact. I am assuming this is where the discouragement starts, and the pay adds on top of it. 

The purpose of this post is for me to know if it's possible to get into the UN, ICJ, etc. with a legal degree from Canada, and which path I could take during law school. Thank you all. 

[MyWifesBoyfriend]

11 minutes ago, writeandread said:

The purpose of this post is for me to know if it's possible to get into the UN, ICJ, etc. with a legal degree from Canada, and which path I could take during law school.

Oh man. 

 

Edit so that my post is marginally more useful: https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/amal-clooney

See enclosed link @writeandread. This is the caliber of professional credentials you'll need for these dream positions. 

Edited February 26 by MyWifesBoyfriend

[CleanHands]

16 minutes ago, writeandread said:

That being said, the initial response I always get when I ask about human rights law from a person who has had a previous interest in it, says that it doesn't pay the bills or the debt, nor are they able to make a significant impact. I am assuming this is where the discouragement starts, and the pay adds on top of it. 

This is the kind of rationalization law students come up with when they end up being uncompetitive for the positions they originally wanted.

When you go to law school you'll see that in the first week everyone wants either BigLaw or International Human Rights law, then after grades come back suddenly half the class goes "I've given this a lot of thought and decided that working at a mid-sized firm outside of a major city is really what I want to do."

[BlockedQuebecois]

1 hour ago, BHC1 said:

To be fair, there is a ton of international human rights legal work out there. […] The lawyers assisting refugees on the Southern US border on a donation/barter basis come to mind.

The lawyers assisting refugees on the US-Mexico border aren’t practicing international human rights law. They’re almost exclusively practicing domestic immigration and refugee law. 

13 minutes ago, writeandread said:

The purpose of this post is for me to know if it's possible to get into the UN, ICJ, etc. with a legal degree from Canada, and which path I could take during law school.

My answer above wasn’t a joke. It isn’t literally impossible to work your way from a Canadian law school to international legal organisations, but it’s going to be far less direct a route than if you just go to an elite university in the US or Europe.

And if you aren’t able to get into an elite university in the US or Europe, you almost certainly don’t have the intellectual horsepower to make a career out of practicing international human rights law. 

[BHC1]

16 minutes ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

The lawyers assisting refugees on the US-Mexico border aren’t practicing international human rights law. They’re almost exclusively practicing domestic immigration and refugee law. 

My answer above wasn’t a joke. It isn’t literally impossible to work your way from a Canadian law school to international legal organisations, but it’s going to be far less direct a route than if you just go to an elite university in the US or Europe.

And if you aren’t able to get into an elite university in the US or Europe, you almost certainly don’t have the intellectual horsepower to make a career out of practicing international human rights law. 

Yes - the unsexy domestic application of international human rights law. If OP wants to do this type of work, I’m just point out that it exists in abundance but they probably don’t want to do it. 

I don’t disagree with anything that you’ve posted, but there is more to international human rights law than the Hague. 
 

 

[Diplock]

33 minutes ago, BHC1 said:

Yes - the unsexy domestic application of international human rights law. If OP wants to do this type of work, I’m just point out that it exists in abundance but they probably don’t want to do it. 

I don’t disagree with anything that you’ve posted, but there is more to international human rights law than the Hague. 
 

 

There's obviously legal work to do in Canada that has international components to it. For example, fighting someone's extradition hearing involves international law. But exactly as noted, that's never what a would-be student has in mind when they say "international human rights." They mean flying to some benighted county as a first world savior, leveraging the might of their education at Osgoode to bring justice to people who are too ignorant to produce competent lawyers on their own, but hopefully have good restaurants and maybe some slopes or at least scuba diving. I mean, yeah I'm being a dick. But basically that, all the same.

There are so many good lawyers in Canada working in the trenches doing desperately needed work with people right here. You want to help people who badly need your skills, your smarts, and yes your privilege to do what they can't do for themselves? Help some poor drug-addicted mother who wants to get clean and keep custody of her kids. Help some badly injured construction worker wring reasonable benefits out of the WSIB. Help some stupid teenager avoid ending up with a criminal record just because some junior Crown is on a warpath. I know people who did all of those things while they were still in law school. But no one gave them a free vacation to do it in some interesting part of the world.

[JackoMcSnacko]

OP - what exactly about IHR do you want to do?  The term "International Human Rights" is so broad that at best your question is lacking, or at worse your understanding and motivations are lacking.  You may already know this, but IHR law is an umbrella term that encompasses a multitude of legal practices (e.g. property, criminal, administrative, immigration, constitutional, etc.), almost exclusively related to foreign-jurisdictions and to varying degrees international.  Your question is the equivalent of "which Canadian university sports program will help me become a track athlete in the Olympics?" Similar to that question, the the answer is: unless you have a background that's been withheld in your initial post, probably none except marginal cases.  The ignorant undertone in that analogous question is intentional. 

Perhaps narrow your question further and list out specific motivations or goals, so people stop piling on to what's essentially just idealistic daydreaming based on your current question. 

My analogy above to Canadian Track in the Olympics is intentional btw - Canada has presence in IHR same as track events in the Olympics, though it's thinly represented it's not impossible, but good luck finding substantive advice if you just ask random people on the internet.  For IHR specifically Canada is too small and too far away to have a meaningful path towards any particular area of IHR that I know of. 

I'll leave you with an actual path towards IHR law that you can consider as an example, but note that this is just a very narrow example to show that the path exists, and not an endorsement of the firms or organizations mentioned.  I haven't seen any in Canadian biglaw (but I also haven't looked around), but US biglaw has pro bono programs that are involved with organizations in the space.  For example, White and Case has a formal pro bono secondment program to PILPG, who work with various foreign governments on international issues and conflicts.  PILPG also regularly works with other US biglaw firms on international pro bono projects, so that's a way to get involved in some capacity.  Assuming your motivations are to actually want to work (and it is frequently tedious work) and not to fly around the world saving non-white people, US-based organizations is one path towards working in the space, and the (most obvious and straight forward) path that way is through UofT > top % > US Biglaw > migrate into one of these organizations. 

 

 

Edited February 26 by JackoMcSnacko

[Whist]

Also not a lawyer, but I've done some of the areas I describe below while still in law school. So I'm going to bounce off Diplock's post and add that if you're genuinely interested in human rights, there is a ton of work you can do with that domestically, starting as early as 1L. If you're passionate about it, there's no shortage of options. 

You can do human rights in the most literal sense where you help people file human rights complaints, most likely as an employment and/or labour lawyer. You can work with Constitutional rights, which could have you in Aboriginal law contesting complex treaty issues; or as a criminal lawyer doing Charter cases and helping people where the only thing they might have left to lose is their freedom. You can advocate for human rights in the broader sense - maybe you do child protection work assisting parents trying to get clean and get custody, maybe you work at a legal clinic with disabled clients being evicted. Maybe you do immigration and/or refugee work. Maybe you're like that one guy who exclusively helps people sue cops that brutalized them. 

It's kind of a meme in the legal community for an incoming law student/1L to say they want to do international human rights law. For some people it might genuinely be true, but oftentimes, it comes across as an expression of naïveté from people who like the idea of helping those in need, but want social prestige/glamour without getting their hands dirty. With exceptions of course, many of the areas above aren't glamorous. Impoverished clients, aside from being justifiably frustrated with their circumstances, often struggle with mental health, addiction, or housing insecurity. There's nothing wrong with wanting to work with more sophisticated clients, for lack of a better term, which often correlates with better pay. But when someone says they want to help people by being an international human rights lawyer, with no background in that area or law at all, it can come across as a... "let them eat cake" attitude. I'm not going to make any claims about your personal motivations, but the perception of what I just discussed is why you're getting the responses you are.

[writeandread]

2 hours ago, JackoMcSnacko said:

OP - what exactly about IHR do you want to do?  The term "International Human Rights" is so broad that at best your question is lacking, or at worse your understanding and motivations are lacking. 

PILPG also regularly works with other US biglaw firms on international pro bono projects, so that's a way to get involved in some capacity.  Assuming your motivations are to actually want to work (and it is frequently tedious work) and not to fly around the world saving non-white people, US-based organizations is one path towards working in the space, and the (most obvious and straight forward) path that way is through UofT > top % > US Biglaw > migrate into one of these organizations. 

I'm not exactly sure about what it is I would like to do within IHR, and what is exactly possible (I was hoping to get clarification from here). Considering the responses, I'm assuming people think I just want to live in luxury and have my name plastered in the news. That's a very big and false assumption, and maybe I played a role by saying I wanted to do IHR without clarifying.

I am not looking for the luxuries, nor the titles. What I would like to do is gain enough knowledge and "power" within governments or the UN to make impactful positive change with a legal education. I don't necessarily have to be a lawyer, correct? Even if the "impactful change" isn't on a larger scale, I would like to eventually use my JD and knowledge of the legal world to perhaps help marginalized individuals across the world. I don't know if this would count as IHR anymore. 

To your point about pro bono work and organizations as such, I think that would definitely be a possibility for me. Thank you! 

[Diplock]

1 minute ago, writeandread said:

I'm not exactly sure about what it is I would like to do within IHR, and what is exactly possible (I was hoping to get clarification from here). Considering the responses, I'm assuming people think I just want to live in luxury and have my name plastered in the news. That's a very big and false assumption, and maybe I played a role by saying I wanted to do IHR without clarifying.

I am not looking for the luxuries, nor the titles. What I would like to do is gain enough knowledge and "power" within governments or the UN to make impactful positive change with a legal education. I don't necessarily have to be a lawyer, correct? Even if the "impactful change" isn't on a larger scale, I would like to eventually use my JD and knowledge of the legal world to perhaps help marginalized individuals across the world. I don't know if this would count as IHR anymore. 

To your point about pro bono work and organizations as such, I think that would definitely be a possibility for me. Thank you! 

Look, I don't think your intentions are bad, truly. I'd just encourage you to consider, again, that as a lawyer qualified to practice law in Canada, you have a super power that enables you to help people who desperately need help here. While outside Canada, as you acknowledge, you're basically just a reasonably well educated person with good intentions and no immediately relevant skills. If your goal is really to help people, and you aren't motivated by lifestyle, glory, etc. I'd encourage you to ask this question. Why are you so hell bent on leaving the place you can most effectively help people, to go somewhere else you'll be far less effective, just to help people there?

Answer that question, and we'll be in business.