Next January, UBC will offer a new clinical program in environmental and natural resources law. (Photo: Heather Gardiner)

In January 2014, 2L and 3L students at the University of British Columbia will have the opportunity to take part in a new externship program that combines two weeks of classroom activities with nine weeks of work experience in environmental and natural resources law.

In order to increase access to justice, we need to make some changes to legal education, says Nikki Gershbain, national director of Pro Bono Students Canada.

“If we really want to change the nature of the system and increase access to justice, we have to educate the next generation of lawyers,” says Nikki Gershbain, national director of Pro Bono Students Canada.

When people would say, “It’s all downhill from here,” I never really got it. I’m not a biker or skier or lover of roller coasters, so the literal meaning didn’t resonate with me. Of course, I knew its metaphorical significance, but it was such a physical analogy that I just took the meaning for granted. This past week, however, I have come to understand the idea absolutely and completely: second year of law school is over and I’m like the little kid on the toboggan at the top of the hill, shouting with glee, smiling ear to ear.

The team: (l to r) Phi Nguyen, Lara Kinkartz, Ian Perry, Chris Hunter

Canada had a strong showing at the 2013 Commonwealth Law Moot, finishing second in the preliminary rounds and third overall. The competition was held in Cape Town, South Africa, and coincided with the Commonwealth Law Conference.

In my third year of law school, I was unemployed. To undergraduate students (and my mom) the idea of having a job before you graduate is bizarre and a little “over-achieving.”

Windsor law’s OyeZ has been on hiatus since the dean removed it from circulation earlier this year.

One by one, student publications at the University of Windsor are disappearing from the campus.

No stranger to controversy, Bruce Feldthusen leaves his post as Ottawa’s common law dean in July.

A culture shift is on the horizon for the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law with the impending departure of its common law dean. In July, Bruce Feldthusen will leave his post of dean after more than a decade.

“Suffering is part of the human condition. This may seem painfully trite to say, but in the legal community, we too often view having human vulnerabilities as a failing. . . . My experience confirms for me that lawyers, despite protests to the contrary, are, in fact, human and that those who are able to accept their humanness live much more balanced lives. Whatever life throws at you, allowing yourself to feel and process the feelings that accompany those hardships helps you cope with and ultimately get past them. Resisting human frailties, on the other hand, leads to self-loathing and anxiety.” — Doron Gold, Law Times, “Speaker’s Corner: Why do lawyers insist upon torturing themselves?”

Juron Grant-Kinnear was denied the right to sit for bar exams in Canada.

It’s not unheard of for internationally trained lawyers to be denied access to the Canadian bar. But in a rare move, a U.K. law graduate whose application was rejected took his case to court, and ultimately lost.