Is There Life after Law School? Articling, Lawyering, and Other Possibilities

• Author: Allan C. Hutchinson
• Pages: 231-256

You have negotiated the travails of law school and come through bet-

ter and wiser: What next? How can you or should you deploy the skills

and qualifications you have acquired? There are, of course, many

answers and responses. An LL.B./J.D. comes with no guarantees of

fame or fortune, happiness or security, wisdom or judgment. There

are so many ways in which you can put your law degree to work. The

most obvious and frequent is to enter into the private practice of law.

But there are also other paths to travel — government, politics, busi-

ness, social advocacy, to name a few. Most students usually take the

step of qualifying for the bar, so that they at least have the option to

become a practising lawyer. Nevertheless, you must resist the temp-

tation to remain on the conveyor belt that tends to run from law

schools to large urban firms. It is the easy thing to do, but it is not the

right or the best thing for everyone. Rather than decide by default,

you owe it to yourself to make a positive and informed resolution

about your future career.

is there life after law school?

articling, lawyering, and other possibilities

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In this final chapter, I explore some of the possibilities and challenges

that will present themselves to you after law school. After surveying

the basic structure of the legal profession, there is an account of what

articling is like and how to get an articling position. Next, I provide a

brief glimpse at the prospects and possibilities for employment in

private practice and elsewhere. Finally, there is an introduction to the

ethical dimension of lawyering. Calling into question the traditional

approaches, I suggest a different and more suitable style of lawyering.

If you know some of these matters at the beginning of your law

school career, you will have a broader context both for your studies

and for law school in general.

going to the bar

Lawyers in Canada are part of a joint profession. Students are called to

the bar as solicitors and as barristers. This distinction between those

who do and those who do not litigate as advocates in court is traceable

to the English profession, which remains split, with very different

entry requirements and training for barristers and for solicitors.

Although there is a de facto split in the Canadian profession, with a

small group of lawyers dominating the litigation process, there is still

a much greater and healthier shifting between roles; many general

practitioners do a small amount of court work. Moreover, there is no

such entity as the lawyer, a fungible professional model that can stand

in for and represent the rest of the profession. There are many differ-

ent kinds of lawyers and ways of lawyering — small firms, large firms,

sole practitioners, urban practices, rural practices, generalist firms,

specialist firms, female firms, ethnic firms, and so on.

All provinces have a governing body that is controlled by lawyers

and that has a monopoly over the certification and discipline of

lawyers. Although the requirements for call to the bar vary slightly

from province to province, the basic pattern is that all students must

possess a law degree from an accredited law school. In the case of for-

eign-trained or overseas lawyers, they must have their credentials val-

idated by the Joint Committee on Accreditation in Ottawa; such

accreditation will often entail foreign lawyers being required to do

232 / the law school book