Allard Hall, UBC's new Faculty of Law building, is now open. Photo: University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia’s new $56-million Faculty of Law building Allard Hall, which opens today, is the first new law building in Canada built from the ground up in 30 years.

One of the quirky aspects of Canada’s legal system is its lack of any national standard for law grads or foreign students queuing for admission to bar exam programs in any province or territory. The closest de facto standard was issued by the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1957 and revamped in 1969. However, not all law societies used the dated guidelines. 

 

As mandatory sentences are becoming more common and with Bill C-25 limiting credit for time served in remand, such thresholds are being seen as steadily eroding judicial discretion. The most notable wave washing ashore on judicial benches was seen in the Conservatives’ Tackling Violent Crime Act (Bill C-2 passed in 2008). The government is rationalizing mandatory minimums as the public’s desire to see more uniformity in sentencing practices. But the price of such sentencing “fits,” more solidly entrenched in the U.S., is taking its own toll on the Canadian justice system.

Not every lawyer can say he has crawled through the belly of an Israeli army tank scrubbing out bilge. “Every 600 hours, they take the engine out for reconditioning,” says Morris Soronow, a B.C. lawyer and litigator. “What is left is a lot of grease, oil, and sand and if this is not cleaned out, when the refurbished engine goes back in, it will gum it up.”

No one is ‘fighting for nickels’ while ‘dimes rain down’ in Vancouver’s booming legal market.

Community support and expectations both pushed aboriginal student Doug White toward the law.