: Are you an individual or organization who is interested in access to justice, specifically in addressing the rising cost
of law school tuition and mounting barriers for new law students and lawyers?
I had never quite heard this argument made this way before — that
high law school tuition results in less justice for public service law jobs.
If all current
law school tuition freezes and regulations (i.e. price controls) were lifted, it is easy to conceive of rapid and substantial tuition hikes from coast to coast.
Law School Tuition Bubble crunched some Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data and figured out that lawyers are leaving the profession at an overall average of 25.5 %.
B.C. universities aren't going to get any more money from government (that's obvious), but a freeze
on law school tuition means that UVic and UBC will find it harder to attract the «best and brightest» legal scholars and may well have to lay off support staff.
MacEwen finds this a powerful number, though I'm a little skeptical — I think that other factors may explain the retention rate, such as
increased law school tuition costs forcing women to stay in the workforce longer to repay loans and more women deferring children until they advance up the corporate ladder.
Oh, and what happens to «accessibility» if UVic and UBC charge, say $ 6,000 more a year
for law school tuition?
Couple the bleak prospects afforded by legal aid retainers
with law school tuition fees that have skyrocketed and one can not blame any reasonable student for abandoning a future in criminal law.
Accordingly, the focus of this initiative is to develop a strategic plan of action to
reduce law school tuition in Ontario, which must engage Ontario Law Schools, the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Province of Ontario.
JD Students at Osgoode Hall have the dubious distinction of paying the second highest
law school tuition in Canada: $ 23,599.
Chris Rudnicki of University of Windsor law school has attracted some attention recently by pointing out that
if law school tuition in Ontario had risen with inflation it would be approximately $ 3,500.
A2J is a grassroots initiative involving law students, practitioners and community members whose aim is to advocate for practical solutions designed to
decrease law school tuition in Ontario as a vehicle for increasing access to justice.
But he rebranded it in July 2015 after shifting its primary focus
from law school tuition to student debt and legal education in general.
This fall A2J will be hosting its annual organizing conference in Ottawa, Ontario to strategize on ways to reverse the trend of exponentially
rising law school tuition that currently far exceeds the financial means of many students.
The cost of
law school tuition varies from school to school, and going with the less expensive option of your top choices can help to cut back the amount of debt you'll need to pay off.
Jones acknowledges that pressure to work faster is part of the reality of legal work, but he suspects that it may come at a cost: «One of my students studied the increase in the number of ethical complaints made to a law society alongside the increase in the cost of
law school tuition over the same period within a jurisdiction, and found a possible correlation.
OHLS's tuition fees are now in the upper strata of
Canadian law school tuition fees, and so are its conference fees among CPD (Continuing Professional Development) conference providers.
An effect, then, of tuition deregulation and
climbing law school tuition fees is to create an increasingly narrow social category of student who can afford the professional gamble of a law degree.
Flash forward to an age of
soaring law school tuition rates and declining job openings, when students complain of heavy debts and a lack of practical training, and suddenly the age - old apprenticeship seems like a suitable tool for modern times.
Tamanaha next discusses
why law school tuition has risen to the precise level that it has over the last two decades.
Tagged with: board of trustees Dean of Admission financial aid leslie hume Richard Shaw Stanford Board of Trustees
Stanford Law School tuition increase West Campus Recreation Center
Massachusetts SB 1446
Converts law school tuition into tax credit if attorney serves as public defender or otherwise practices «public interest law» as defined.
While systemic engagement is part of the strategy, law students and the legal community must consider more radical engagement including student strikes, non-payment of loans and targeted campaigns that seek to target stakeholders in an attempt to create greater transparency and democracy within the scheme of
law school tuition payment.
«Make the rich Ontarians not pay» may well be the most appropriate motto of Advanced Education Minister Naomi Yamamoto and the rest of the B.C. Liberals, who refuse to allow UBC and UVic to increase
law school tuition levels (except by a measly two per cent per year for inflation) to match the average charged across Canada: $ 14,300 per year.
They were discussing how they can't sleep well at night because they're unable to
raise law school tuition to levels charged in other parts of Canada because of a B.C. government mandated tuition freeze that applies to both undergraduate faculties and professional schools.
So, to be blasphemous, there is no valid public policy reason why B.C.
needs law school tuition frozen at artificially low levels when it is $ 5,000 to $ 15,000 higher in Ontario.
Some firms will pay
for law school tuition, but even if you can locate such an arrangement, your employer / sponsor will probably expect you to work as you study, which will delay the completion of your degree.
The LSSO survey underscores the importance of why a student voice is needed to push not only law schools, but also all concerned stakeholders in the profession towards advocating for
reduced law school tuition.
High law school tuition fees as an «output» access - to - justice issue (by which I mean that high tuition somehow dampens the number of lawyers working in non-Big Law positions) has never struck me as a convincing, or even demonstrated, argument (though high tuition fees as an «input» problem is a fairly obvious conclusion: the cost of tuition will necessarily dissuade or prevent some people from going to law school in the first place).
Perhaps
if law school tuition wasn't so (bleeping) high, lawyers wouldn't feel such pressure to join Big Law.
We are aiming to bring together law students, law professors, legal professionals, and community members from across Ontario to share experiences and to discuss ways to target law faculties, the province, and the Law Society of Upper Canada to: (1)
decrease law school tuition and (2) to foster the practice of law that relates to issues of social justice and for vulnerable and low income clients.
Low law school tuition is nothing more than a subsidy funded by B.C. taxpayers for those who would otherwise be able to pay for their valuable law degree soon after they start practising (or get hired in other industries that find a law degree an asset).
With law school tuition being 5x what it was in my day, I can't help but feel that new matriculants are being duped.