Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Province lays down the law

Asearch through the Law Society of Upper Canada's directory shows there are 203 lawyers in Sudbury. Yep, that's right CCIII.


The Law Society of Upper Canada's membership data shows there are 38,879 lawyers in the province. (We won't trouble you with the Roman numerals.) Almost 1,500 new lawyers were called to the bar last year in Ontario.


A few in Sudbury aren't practising, a few are suspended, a few in the registry are deceased.


And while the North suffers from a chronic lack of professionals and specialists, with lawyers it is not because the province isn't churning out enough of them, it's largely because they don't settle here.


The argument made in favour of the medical school -- training doctors in the North, giving them a look at the lifestyle -- can reasonably be transferred to lawyers, since they must leave the area to enrol in one of Canada's 16 law schools (Ontario has six) to pursue their legal ambitions. But if the province is to put money into education, the legal profession, says Colleges and Universities Minister John Milloy, isn't a priority. He wants to focus on graduate studies and doctors.


We cannot disagree with those priorities.



Read the whole editorial here.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:56 pm

    there are really enough law schools in Ontario. Do you really think that if they opened a new law school in LU that students will stay up north after graduating? I highly doubt it will make a significant difference to the north...its not an attractive place to live in, especially for people with professional degrees, and that's the sad truth.

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  2. Maybe the government needs to provide incentives for lawyers to relocate in Northern Ontario as it already does with doctors. While there may be few lawyers in that area it seems there would probably be mostly general practice work available and not all lawyers want to be a jack of all legal areas and master of none.

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