Law schools in Canada started out as elite and exclusive places, but they are now changing to adapt to the needs of the future.
Law schools may conjure many images in a person’s mind: sturdy granite and sandstone walls covered with a dense growth of English ivy, centuries-old neoclassic buildings linked by sedate pathways, classrooms smelling of oiled wood, libraries with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and serious-minded professors teaching everything from contracts, torts and real estate to criminal and constitutional law. Today, the lecture halls are still around, but the topics are broader and the student body more diverse. The setting is more likely modern-day architecture of glass and brick, with brightly-lit classrooms, modular learning and discussion spaces with laptops everywhere.
Just as the environment has changed, so has the approach. But just which law school is Canada’s oldest may be a matter of debate. Opening in 1883, Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law is the “first school of common law in the British Empire … the oldest faculty in Canada teaching in the traditions of the English common law,” according to its website.
McGill University’s Civil Law faculty, in place since 1848, also stakes a claim as Canada’s oldest. And then there is Osgoode Hall, opened in 1832 by the Law Society of Upper Canada (now known as the Law Society of Ontario). Osgoode officially became a law school in 1889, but starting in 1855, the Law Society required students to attend lectures there. The school was named for William Osgoode, Canada’s first Chief Justice. Those who passed through its doors include prime ministers (like Sir John A. Macdonald and Arthur Meighen), supreme court justices (Bora Laskin, Sir Lyman Duff, Michelle O’Bonsawin), legal pioneers (Leonard Braithwaite, Clara Brett Martin), and novelist Morley Callaghan.
Canada’s newest law school is Toronto Metropolitan University’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law. Opening its doors in 2020, its first class graduated in 2023. Alexander was Canada’s first Black member of Parliament and an Osgoode Hall graduate (1953). With its focus on equity, diversity, and innovation in legal education, Lincoln Alexander’s graduates become lawyers who are “innovative, nimble, and well-equipped to meeting the evolving technological and social challenges taking place in society and the marketplace,” according to its website.
History and the law school
Experts emphasize that Canadian history and the law are closely linked. Legal scholars James Phillips and Philip Girard, in Fifty Years of Canadian Legal History, say Canada’s legal environment was transformed significantly by “the willingness of legal academics, as well as lawyers and judges, to look beyond traditional ways of understanding the law, and the recognition by the historical community that law must be factored in to their catalogue of significant historical forces.” According to W. Wesley Pue in Common Law Legal Education in Canada’s Age of Light, Soap and Water, “Developments in legal education are inseparably part and parcel of the larger Canadian cultural history.”
Pre-Confederation Canada witnessed a blend of Indigenous law (traditions that existed before European settlement), English common law (the law of precedents, or laws derived through interpretation of previous cases) and French civil law (based on the rules-based Napoleonic Codes). Today, Quebec follows civil law in private matters, common law applies to the rest of the country, and Indigenous rights (recognizing Indigenous peoples’ historical land occupancy and treaties) receive constitutional protection.
According to Fenner Stewart, in a review of A History of Law in Canada, Volume Two: Law for the New Dominion, 1867-1914, by Phillips, Girard, and R. Blake Brown, settlers often “dismissed Indigenous law” and saw Indigenous traditional practices of governance and oral transmission as “merely ‘folkloric and not real law.’” This allowed them “to frame assimilation efforts as virtuous attempts to prepare Indigenous peoples for a modern world.” By contrast, “Quebec civil law… flourished.”
The 1763 Royal Proclamation established the structure for land treaties, and the 1774 Quebec Act confirmed French civil law as the standard for private law in Quebec. The 1867 British North America Act (today’s Constitution Act) divided law-making powers between the federal and provincial governments. By 1892, Canada had established its own Criminal Code, and in 1982, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms set standards for individual rights and freedoms.
The early years
Behind the ivy-covered walls in the 19th century, law students spent time articling (working under the mentorship of a practising lawyer), reading case studies and writing exams over the course of three to five years. Rote work was a key factor in their training, with an emphasis on common law outside of Quebec. Students memorized elements of the law, attended court to observe cases unfolding, studied previous legal decisions and learned how to manage a law office. Law societies kept a tight hold on recruitment, leading to criticism of the profession as an elite “old boys’ network.” It was an environment filled with overwhelmingly white, male lawyers, where students apprenticed to practising lawyers learned the profession by the traditional “reading” of the law.
Reformers actively sought a more structured academic environment for teaching the subject. These were “heroic struggles fought by great (academic) men to establish an academic university education in law as the principal professional qualification. These heroic individuals were all but stymied by the opposition of hostile, small-minded legal practitioners,” says Pue in Common Law Legal Education in Canada’s Age of Light, Soap and Water.
The reformers would eventually have their way with the establishment of schools like Osgoode, McGill and Dalhousie. But progress was slow. According to its website, Osgoode had students from September to April, only two part-time lecturers and a principal, and undergraduates studied only five subjects in their first year. Students would attend morning lectures and spend “the rest of the day working in a firm on Bay Street.” Over the years, struggles continued between the academic and the practical aspects of teaching law.
Fast forward to today: an average of three years of coursework including criminal, tort and property law, legal research, case methodology, Indigenous law and experiential learning such as moot court (simulated court appeals) and legal clinic and trial advocacy simulations. Articling is a major requirement and lasts for 10 to 12 months after law school.
Challenges and opportunities
The diverse geographic and specialized nature of Canadian law has led to the creation of effective subcultures in Canada’s legal profession, as Harry Arthurs notes in Lawyering in Canada in the 21st Century:
“Labour or securities or criminal lawyers in metropolitan centres to some degree constitute distinct subcultures; lawyers who practise in small towns – whether in Alberta or Nova Scotia or Quebec – constitute another; law firms are distinctive subcultures in themselves … Each of these sub-cultures provides a degree of internal cohesion and regulation within the specialty, community or firm.”
But are law schools going from venerable to vulnerable? Discussion today revolves around meeting the needs of underserved communities and recognizing challenges in the legal market’s ability to take on new graduates. Existing law schools are looking at changes ranging from integrated practice curriculum models to specialized online certificate programs.
According to Catherine Dauvergne, in New Crossroads and the Opportunity for a Crisis – The State of Canadian Legal Education, some current challenges include the need “to Indigenize legal education, the challenges of greater diversity and inclusion, the stagnancy of legal pedagogy, the turn to experiential learning, and the unique funding environment.” Schools with a strong Indigenous legal focus include the University of Victoria (the world’s first to grant an Indigenous law degree), Osgoode Hall, the University of British Columbia, the University of Saskatchewan’s Indigenous Law Centre and the University of Ottawa.
In The Best and the Brightest?: Canadian Law School Admissions, Dawna Tong and W. Wesley Pue write of Canada’s increasing use of American-style admission guidelines. Canadian law schools rely “heavily on admissions criteria and policies developed in the United States and, like their American counterparts, typically admit students on the basis of ‘index scores’ produced by combining Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) performance with Undergraduate Grade Point Average (UGPA).” The authors stress that schools must make sure that admissions do not rely on “‘old boy’ referrals, ‘know-who’ admissions, or other forms of ‘small c’ corruption,” and should assess their admissions criteria in light of their goals of equity and diversity.
Future concerns include a need for experiential, skills-based learning, and the risk that higher tuition fees may restrict student access to social advocacy law. AI looms large; schools like Osgoode and UBC’s Allard Law are already adding AI-focused technology courses into their curriculum. Programs like Lexus AI help “law students and lawyers [with searching] case law, drafting documents, and anything under the sun that is covered in the legal sphere,” according to Emma Edney in Recess: Is AI in Law School a Helpful Tool or a Hidden Trap? Yet “[f]rom AI ethics perspectives, law schools need to ensure that AI is used as a tool to help with case research but not dependent on it since client information can slip through the cracks if training is not at the forefront. Society risks producing law students who can generate answers but lack judgment and communication.”
The future promises change, and we are witnessing an evolution of law schools into agile, workplace-ready institutions and sites where specialization is the focus – and where those English ivy-clad granite walls, rote learning and old-boys’ networks have been replaced by fluid, nimble, technology-driven responses to today’s legal needs.
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DISCLAIMER The information in this article was correct at time of publishing. The law may have changed since then. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of LawNow or the Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta.
About John Cooper
