Like so many others, maybe you too “fell” into law. Maybe you weren’t sure what you wanted to do with your life so you decided to give it a try. Maybe you buckled under the pressure from family members to follow in their footsteps, or you just did it because your friends were doing it. Whatever the reason, you’re now in law school — and there’s no doubt it’s going to be a tough three years.
And if you’re having trouble finding an articling position, you are not alone. Presently, there simply aren’t enough articling positions available to accommodate the number of students graduating from law school. You don’t have to know exactly what you want to do when you graduate — you may not even want to practise law. The good news is your legal training and years of academia open doors to a plethora of exciting careers outside of law that you can pursue with your legal degree.
If you can’t break into the legal field, or you decide to pursue a different career path, those arduous three years weren’t necessarily a waste of time. Canadian Lawyer 4Students has pulled together a group of working professionals who all graduated from law school, some briefly practising law, but eventually all deciding private practice wasn’t for them. So they sought alternative careers in different industries, including technology, business, finance, non-profit/community work, academia, and journalism. All of them still find their law degree applicable to their current job and admit that the knowledge and skills they gained in law school come in handy from time to time.
So if you’re not sure what you want to do with your life or you’re having trouble finding an articling position, do not fear! There are countless careers — aside from private practice — that you can pursue, and as you can see from the working professionals in this article, there are plenty of other industries that your law degree can help you break into.
Like so many others, maybe you too “fell” into law. Maybe you weren’t sure what you wanted to do with your life so you decided to give it a try. Maybe you buckled under the pressure from family members to follow in their footsteps, or you just did it because your friends were doing it. Whatever the reason, you’re now in law school — and there’s no doubt it’s going to be a tough three years.
Like so many others, maybe you too “fell” into law. Maybe you weren’t sure what you wanted to do with your life so you decided to give it a try. Maybe you buckled under the pressure from family members to follow in their footsteps, or you just did it because your friends were doing it. Whatever the reason, you’re now in law school — and there’s no doubt it’s going to be a tough three years.
A growing shortage of articling positions has left hundreds of law grads saddled with the prospect of having run up massive student debts for a shot at a profession that has no room left at the inn. The problem — primarily concentrated in Ontario, although British Columbia appears to be experiencing a minor shortage as well — has a simple explanation. More prospective lawyers than ever before are seeking entry to the legal profession, especially practitioners trained outside Canada. Stats show that in 2006, the Law Society of Upper Canada accepted 1,400 registrants to its licensing program. That number spiked to 1,750 in 2010. Meanwhile, in 2008, 5.8 per cent of applicants failed to secure an articling position within their first year of eligibility. That number rose to 12.1 per cent in 2011.
For Chase Barlet, attending McGill University’s Faculty of Law was not just the first step in becoming a lawyer. During Barlet’s undergraduate degree at a Mormon university, he could have been expelled for having a boyfriend. Attending McGill’s law school marked the first time he could be entirely open about his sexuality. “I went from having to be almost completely in the closet to being able to be completely out in a matter of months, which was incredibly liberating,” says the second-year law student. “At McGill, people have been nothing but welcoming and accepting.”
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