By my fifth year of practice, I had noticed a stubborn trend: new calls often lacked truly elementary legal skills. A first-year associate once asked me when a statement of defence has to be filed after receiving a statement of claim. Another wanted to know how to bring a motion. Such questions struck me as beyond basic, especially for people who had completed law school and articled in my firm’s litigation practice. On countless occasions, I also reviewed work that was shoddy and unfinished on the expectation that I would correct the mistakes and fill in the blanks. Much of what landed on my desk failed to achieve the quality of a rough draft. To be honest, I was stunned.
I’m hardly alone. Over the course of my legal career, I’ve watched plenty of seasoned lawyers become visibly frustrated—if not downright alarmed—when they find out how little a rookie associate can take on independently. I’ve come to view that moment as a professional rite of passage.
I thought about this phenomenon a few months ago, when the Law Society of Ontario announced a tentative plan to scrap the provincial bar exam and replace it with a mandatory skills-based course. I don’t have a strong stance on the merits of that particular proposal. But at least it acknowledges a longstanding problem: new calls need a tremendous amount of on-the-job training to reach any sort of competence.
Far too often, we ignore this reality. Deep down, we all know the limits of legal education. The knowledge that law professors dispense—on the intricacies of secured transactions or the relationship between the Constitution and Aboriginal title in the context of fishery rights—is often illuminating, but it seldom translates into practical legal craft. It’s no secret, meanwhile, that the articling system fails to deliver consistent training. Yet we’re somehow shocked when an associate is unable to meet the crudest demands of real-life practice.
As senior members of the bar, we need to face the truth. If you want new calls to embark on lawyer life with a decent skill set, you almost certainly have to teach them those skills yourself. And the ideal time to do that is when they’re articling students under your watch. Here’s my advice on how to take your student training to a higher level.
The worst way to train an articling student is to confine that person to routine assignments. During law school, I worked at a criminal-defence shop that basically limited students to set-date court—a solid learning experience at first, but it soon became quite tedious. Other firms silo students to legal research—an insular request to delve into a new piece of legislation or a certain area of caselaw. In both scenarios, you might keep the student busy, even productive. Such narrow tasks, however, shed almost no light on how to handle an actual file or speak to an actual client.
Here’s a better approach. You can still ask students to take on a research project—a fine idea—but it’s vital to then keep them involved in the file at every subsequent stage. Talk to them about your upcoming deadlines with the court. Copy them on emails to opposing counsel. Invite them to client meetings. When you conduct a discovery or argue a motion, bring them along to watch. As the file unfolds, your students will learn how you propel a matter forward, deal with difficult situations and balance competing priorities under intense pressure. That up-close exposure to day-to-day practice is invaluable.
Passive observation, of course, is not sufficient. Preparation is also key. Before a client call, encourage your students to review the status of the file and come with a clear picture of what’s on the agenda. On the call itself, students need to pay close attention to how you frame your advice, manage expectations and respond to questions that arise. Afterward, debrief what took place.
Why isn’t what I’ve described a profession-wide norm? Some senior lawyers, to be sure, struggle to offer that level of instruction while meeting the relentless demands of the job. Others, unfortunately, consider students, who sit at the bottom of the pecking order, unworthy of direct client contact. But I think the dominant reason is simpler: most lawyers never received that kind of training themselves.
Don’t repeat that cycle. Perhaps you learned your craft through the chaos of trial and error. Now that you’re a supervisor, you have no obligation to replicate that same flawed model. And trust me: when you immerse an articling student in the hourly grind of your legal practice, it produces a new call with a foundation of concrete skills and legal knowledge. Give it a try.
Daniel Waldman is a partner at Dickinson Wright LLP. He writes about career satisfaction and business development for Precedent.