Women and the law
Another dramatic change from the 1970s to present day is the representation of women in the legal profession. The most recent data we could find on the topic showed there were more than 16,000 insured female lawyers in the country in 2002.

A 1977 article in  Canadian Lawyer estimated there were about 2,000 female lawyers at the time and that one out of every three law students was a woman.

(As an aside, the cover for this article featured an attractive woman dressed in lawyers' robes and drew the ire of readers. The letters poured in, mostly from women, chastising us for using a model rather than a "real woman.")

Recent law school stats show that women now represent more than half of the graduates. But are they staying and advancing in the profession at the same rate as their male counterparts? Not really. Male partners still outnumber female partners, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a female managing partner, save for McCarthy Tétrault LLP's Kirby Chown and WeirFoulds LLP's Lisa Borsook.

But things are getting better. When Bertha Wilson applied to law school in 1954, she was told to go home and take up crocheting. And when she applied to a law firm after graduation, the partners debated whether women were suited to practise law. In the '80s, Wilson earned a place on the Supreme Court of Canada.

Now, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin presides over our progressive Supreme Court, which is made up of four women and five men. Compare that to the U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Ruth Ginsberg as the lone woman on the bench.

While women have come a long way since the sexist '70s, here's betting the strides will be even greater 30 years from now.

Some things never change
Flipping through more than 300 back issues of Canadian Lawyer, one starts to see trends developing and being formed. One also starts to see discussions and debates that will never die.

In 1983, writer Trish Chisholm wrote about "the numbers problem" and that the "single most worrisome matter" was "that of the influx of bar admissions graduates."

How many lawyers are too many? In 2006, law society rolls list more than 92,000 lawyers across the country. Law schools continue to pump out fresh-faced graduates with high tuition debt. Many are following the money to urban centres to pay off those debts and the small-town practitioner is not being replaced.

This has been a topic of debate and discussion in this magazine for the past two decades, and will no doubt be one of the biggest issues facing the profession for years to come.

But that's not the only thing that continues to be debated and will likely be the bane of contention for years to come. Law firm remuneration has always been a hot topic. In 1998, legal affairs writer Derek Lundy wrote about "brave new bills," and how alternate billing is a juggernaut that can't be avoided. Yet, no matter how many times a writer has issued the death knell for the almighty billable hour, it has yet to go away. Sure, there are blended rates, discounted rates, and the allowance of contingency fees, but it seems the billable hour is here to stay.

So where will the legal profession be three decades from now? That's hard to say, but chances are that Canada's top law firm will be part of a larger global legal organization. The sole practitioner will be on life support and alternative legal service providers will likely be servicing the smaller rural regions and service sectors like real estate, long abandoned by lawyers. Legal conflicts and court cases involving them will likely impact the make-up of Canada's top law firms. Law schools will continue to debate how many graduates are needed in the marketplace and, because of the growing complexity of law, lawyers will be expected to specialize in defined areas of practice, much like doctors do today. Legal boutiques will probably flourish and law as a business will continue to take centre stage, as female managing partners decide the fate of some major law firms. Increasing globalization will mean larger trade zones for companies that operate here and trade lawyers will no longer be the outcast partners down the hall that engage in a practice nobody really understands.

But there's at least one thing that won't change and that's Canadian Lawyer magazine. The layout might differ and we might come in a PDF format delivered to some type of personal digital content reader similar to an iPod, but like the billable hour,  will remain an old, reliable stalwart that just won't go away. We'll continue to probe, prod, poke, and tweak — providing "timely, provocative feature articles" and a "forum for debate on pressing issues of the day."

Show me the money
While flipping through the archives, we came across our first compensation survey, which debuted in June 1988. The editor at the time, Michael Crawford, called the results a healthy outlook for the profession, with more than 70 per cent of those polled planning to hire more lawyers and staff and most planning salary increases of 10 to 12 per cent for lawyers.
Times were a bit tougher in the most recent edition of the compensation survey. In June 2005, no additional hirings were planned for most respondents, and a small number were expecting layoffs. Salary increases for lawyers were between six and 10 per cent, depending on seniority. We also looked at the first corporate counsel survey, launched in 1989, to see the difference between in-house salaries then and now.