If you think the vote on the future of articling at the Law Society tomorrow will be a straightforward thing, think again.

There are now three sides in this fight.

We predict hours of debate.

Four benchers have not only voiced their objection to the LSUC’s new plan for licensing lawyers, but have actually issued their own separate, supplementary minority report.

Meanwhile, the Advocates’ Society has put out a statement calling for a delay of the debate, saying the profession hasn’t had enough time to review the Law Society’s plan for articling, which was released on October 15. The Advocates’ Society is also offering another option: vote with the minority, as the new plan for articling is too expensive.

The LSUC has been working on a solution to the so-called articling crisis for more than a year now. Its task force has done province-wide consultation and has already issued two previous reports.

The new plan is for law school grads to either go through articling as usual — which will be more strictly monitored for quality control — or take a law practice program (LPP). This will include hands-on courses and a short work stint, likely unpaid. This new program would start in 2014 and run for a five-year pilot.

Four benchers — Jacqueline Horvat, Vern Krishna, Paul Schabas and Peter Wardle — heartily disagree, as voiced in a minority report at the end of the task force’s final report and via separately packaged supplementary materials, which came out a few days after the big Oct 15 report.

The supplementary report mainly crunches numbers, arguing that the minority’s plan to remove articling entirely and replace it with a pre-licensing program of two-to-three months in length, plus provisions for more mentoring for new lawyers in the profession, is affordable.

In this supplementary report, the minority claims its plan would cost just $4,090 per grad, which compares very closely to the cost of $4,350 of the pilot program suggested by the majority of benchers.

The numbers send a clear message: the minority’s idea is not an abstract one, but a plan this small groups feels ready to put into place.

The debate and push to pass a future plan for articling begins tomorrow at 9:30 am at the LSUC. We’ll keep you updated via Twitter and this blog on what’s going on.