On May 22, 2015, the Law Society of Alberta (LSA) announced changes to the articling student Education Plan (Form 2-5, 2-6), which sets out the LSA’s requirements for what a student-at-law must cover while articling. These changes came into effect on June 1.
These changes mark the first major shift in the LSA’s approach to the articling program in several decades. Previously, the LSA’s Education Plan required articling students to cover and be supervised in 5 out of 7 substantive areas of law: real estate, civil litigation, criminal law, family law, business law, wills & estates, and administrative law.
Now, instead of focusing on these substantive categories, the LSA’s Education Plan requires students to experience a broad range of basic lawyering skills, regardless of the area of law in which these skills are developed. Under the new program, it is possible to complete an article in only 1 area of law, so long as all of the required skill sets are covered.
The new Education Plan identifies 5 specific competency areas that articling students must develop during their articling year:
- Ethics and professionalism,
- Practice management,
- Client relationship management,
- Conducting matters, and
- Adjudication/alternative dispute resolution.
The Education Plan lists different tasks—exemplary, not all required—that a student should be exposed to in each of these areas. For example, under the ethics and professionalism competency area, students are encouraged to take part in learning activities such as discussing ethical issues with their principals, discussing strategies for making informed and reasoned decisions about ethical issues, and identifying potential conflict of interest issues. Under the conducting matters competency area, students are encouraged to gather facts through interviews, conduct legal research and analysis, and draft a range of documents. In other words, the focus of the articling year has shifted from experiencing multiple areas of law to developing competencies that are fundamental to an entry-level lawyer.
These changes to the Education Plan were driven, in large part, by a 2012 initiative of the Council of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. This initiative led to a set of national entry-level competencies for admission to the bar. While developing these competencies, the Council identified a full range of knowledge, skills, and tasks required by entry-level lawyers and ranked their importance based on frequency and criticality—that is, how often the skills are used and how badly things go wrong if they are used incorrectly. Based on this list, the Council developed its entry-level competency standards.
The Law Society of Alberta joined twelve other law societies in adopting the national competency standards, subject to a plan for implementation. As part of adopting these standards, the LSA is striving to ensure that articling students have the opportunity to develop each competency. Competency training related to certain areas of legal knowledge, skills, and some tasks is already the focus of law school and the CPLED Program. However, some competencies are best developed in an authentic practice context. What better way to expose students to many practice fundamentals than through the articling year?
For students, the biggest change resulting from the LSA’s new Education Plan will undoubtedly be the ability to pursue an article that covers fewer substantive areas of law. Fewer and fewer firms have a general practice base, so a move towards task-oriented educational goals will open up new articling opportunities with lawyers and firms who otherwise could not meet the substantive requirements of the old Education Plan.
More broadly speaking, the new Education Plan’s focus on competencies should also enable law students to leave their articling year with a well-rounded set of skills, ensuring that they are well-versed in the basic tasks behind a legal practice as well as substantive knowledge and practical skills.
Allison Boutillier
LESA Summer Student
