Legal Research

Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen

By Edward Prutschi

For many years now my firm, Adler Bytensky Prutschi, has enjoyed the opportunity to host a student placement for Osgoode Hall Law School’s Criminal Intensive Program (CIP). This week, for the first time in the history of our involvement with the program, we were informed that “due to low enrolment in the course this year” a student would not be assigned to us.

While I am only hypothesizing, I fear that this storied program’s current enrolment woes are tied directly to the continuing erosion of our legal aid system. Barely a decade ago when I was a student in the CIP, the program was the hottest ticket in law school. Everyone with even a passing interest in criminal law desperately wanted a shot to be a part of its innovative syllabus and unique placement opportunities. Even students who did not foresee a future practicing criminal law would frequently put their names forward for consideration as it was considered the best opportunity for law students generally, and potential litigators in particular, to rub shoulders with superb practitioners and learn the nitty gritty of the “real” practice of law. The alumni of Osgoode’s CIP reads like a who’s-who of this Province’s greatest lawyers. Those of us who had the privilege of participating count ourselves very lucky to be rooted in such auspicious company.

Now, it appears that students have watched their seniors struggle with the increasing hardships of economic survival in a field where legal aid has collapsed to a shadow of its former self. Couple the bleak prospects afforded by legal aid retainers with law school tuition fees that have skyrocketed and one cannot blame any reasonable student for abandoning a future in criminal law.

Osgoode’s CIP is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. As more and more students shun the practice of criminal law the real loss will be felt in short order by our justice system, and indeed the entire general public, as an atrophied defence bar steps in to fill the big shoes of those lawyers now hanging up their robes. Without a steady influx of bright legal minds into programs like the CIP, the future of our criminal bar is in danger. As negotiations over effective funding for legal aid appear to be stalling, will the government heed this warning?

Hold Firm.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 22, 2010 (boomark / email).