Today, the Law Society’s benchers tried to debate and resolve the ongoing dilemma about what to do about articling.
Instead, the final decision about what to do about licensing in the province has been put off for a month.
Convocation for October was mainly devoted to the issue and the morning began with a straightforward presentation of the Articling Task Force’s latest report, which proposes retaining articles for those who can find a position and the introduction of a law practice program (LPP) for those who can’t. This new program would be introduced as a five-year pilot and would include courses, a short work stint and closer monitoring of articling.
But instead of the other side standing up to present its viewpoint, Virginia MacLean, QC, rose and asked for the benchers to vote on a new motion: delay the debate and decision so the legal profession would have more time to digest the task force’s October 15 report. She said the Advocates’ Society, the dean of Windsor Law and students backed the motion.
As a series of benchers then rose to state their opinions, the impact was apparent: even those backing the majority started to make it clear they supported delaying the vote. A friendly motion was suggested: debate today and decide later.
“We now have the profession engaged in the debate, but that discussion started in the last four days,” argued Peter Wardle, partner with Wardle Daley Bernstein LLP.
When Michael Lerner, partner at Lerners, speaking over the phone, admitted the other benchers had convinced him to change his mind on the topic, the deal seemed to be sealed.
After nearly two hours of debate, the benchers took a break. They returned and swiftly passed a revised motion to delay the decision on articling until November but continued to put forth the debate today.
Then the two sides really dug in. Those supporting the majority report frequently cited the success of LPP programs in Australia (apparently the nation’s Prime Minister got licensed via this route) and the extensive consultation the task force undertook to make its decision.
The majority made it clear that their approach may not be popular with everyone, but that it fulfils the LSUC’s goal of maintaining high standards for the profession and making the liscensing process more fair. This group said via consultation they’d examined every option thoroughly and discovered that each had imperfections, but the LPP option was overall the most viable. Said Malcolm Mercer, partner at McCarthy Tétrault: “We don’t have any really good choices, we have a number of choices which have flaws.”
Meanwhile, the minority stakeholders — who want articling abolished — had their own arguments regarding concerns with creating a two-tiered system and putting off truly dealing with articling for what amounts to nearly seven years.
They said that articling has long been flawed and it’s time to get rid of it. “Articling has always been a barrier to entry,” said former LSUC treasurer Vern Krishna. He spoke of articling’s long history of excluding those outside the mainstream.
When the benchers broke for lunch near 1:30, they cut off the debate. Stay tuned: on November 22 the society will resume the debate and vote on how to proceed.
FYI, today’s convocation was the first ever that was live-streamed over the web. Thanks to the public access and the focus on technology by the LSUC, Twitter and Facebook were both busy with conversations on the topic. On Twitter, #articling was trending across Canada for most of the morning.