In the blur of orientation week, between the bonding sessions, the pub-crawls, and the overwhelming stack of introductory materials, you may have a fuzzy memory of an introduction to one of the most important buildings on campus — the library. “Orientation days are programmed to the minute and I will get to talk to them for maybe three minutes,” says Kathryn Arbuckle, head law librarian at the University of Alberta’s John A. Weir Memorial Law Library. “For some of them, it’s the only chance I may have to speak to them in their whole first year.”

For McInnes Cooper’s Heather Black, being welcomed to her firm’s partnership on Jan. 1 this year was far more than a boost to her pocketbook; it was a watershed moment in her legal career. “It sort of signifies the end of your adolescence as a lawyer,” says the Fredericton, N.B., corporate and commercial law practitioner.

The best advice is often borne from years of experience and that probably holds doubly true for litigators. As such, Canadian Lawyer 4Students gets some excellent counsel from some of the country’s best-known litigators, who have taken the time to mull over the following trying questions:

 

1. What is the most important thing a law school student should know about being a litigator?
2. Who inspired you?
3. How do you balance your professional commitments with family and social life?
4. What class did you enjoy most in law school?
5. What are you currently reading?

 

Alison Hopkins nervously walked into the session. As part of her internship with the Asia Foundation, she would for three days educate 100 male imams in Bangladesh on the importance of child and civics education. Her task wasn’t easy: as a young, female student in a highly patriarchal society, it would be difficult to gain the imams’ respect. “I sat down and they sat as far away from me as possible,” says Hopkins, an articling student at Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP in Ottawa. “I was so uncomfortable.”

 

As I sit to write this issue’s editorial, articling student hopefuls in Toronto are checking their phone batteries and trying not to vibrate out of their chairs while waiting for the “interview day” phone calls from prospective employers. This step is just one of the many nerve-racking experiences in the life of a law student, who unlike students in many other areas (not the professions, of course) have their career paths often planned out years in advance.

 

 

I’m not interested in your job, your income, or your words. I want to know if you can set a goal that scares you into nausea when you commit. And I want to know if you are ready to begin.

If you thought trying to fit in was tough in high school, wait until you apply for a job in the legal profession.

Julia Negrea waited four months for the judge’s decision. Waiting that long had, perhaps, dulled the excitement of potentially winning her first court case, but as the decision was read, Negrea knew she had won. 

 

A 2009 study by the Financial Times showed a general increase in the number of students interested in pursuing an LLM.