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My friend Daniel wrote a great blurb about Canadian Law Schools and told me to share with whoever. I thought this would be a good place to post it!
"Daniel’s Great Canadian Law School Brain Dump
So I’ve been asked by a bunch of people about which law schools to apply to, how to apply, etc. So here goes.
Below is a scatterplot I made for a story I was working on for the10and3.com, which everyone should visit and read all the time because it’s a fantastic website. I went and plotted the median LSAT and GPA scores for each entering law school class in the top 50 US schools, and every single Canadian common law (read: not Quebec law) school in 2014. So some of the data’s a little old.
[insert graph here]
As you can see, these scores matter significantly more in the US than they do in Canada. On the top right hand corner, there’s Columbia University, with its unbelievably high entrance averages, and if I were to continue and plot the remaining 100+ US schools, it would form a pretty clear correlation. In the US, the top students go to the top schools, with very little deviation from the concept.
As you can see, it’s a little different in Canada. The top students are still going to the top schools, of course, but there aren’t really especially “top” schools in Canada in the same way. Instead, they kind of cluster into three categories that I’m about to go through. Since there’s so many fewer law schools (and they tend to be smaller here too), there’s good news and bad. The good news is that lawyers in Canada are considered to be some of the best in the common law (British Commonwealth) system, and a Canadian law degree can actually travel much more than most other ones. It’s also not as difficult to find articling positions in Canada (Western claims it has a 90%+ articling rate, but I’m highly skeptical of that), because relative to the US and UK, we graduate fewer lawyers a year. The bad news is that Canada is one of the hardest places to get into law school! As a result, there’s a bit of a cottage industry in law student tourism that I’ll get to in a bit.
But first, everyone’ s main question to me: Which school do I apply to?
My first piece of advice here is to ignore the tables on the internet that you’ll find that detail the average entrance grades and the like of Canadian schools. They’re usually wrong and really don’t tell much of the story (entrance averages on their own are dumb – you need them with the standard deviation and some idea of how normal their distributions are). The next thing is to ignore the Maclean’s Ranking guide. Maclean’s again only tells a small part of the story, and they tend to skew towards schools that focus on training academics – not much weight is put on things like global reach, firm hiring rates, class sizes, and student experience. What’s freely available online is also quite a bit out of date.
As I mentioned earlier, there are more or less three clusters of schools.
Tier One – The Tough Ones
These schools are ridiculously tough to get into, because they have the highest entrance averages (which I gleaned from their 2013 or 2014 prospectuses, not stupid internet tables), and tend to attract competitive students.
Toronto – unquestionably the best law school in Canada, with entrance averages that seem to rival the top US schools. The good news is that graduates tend to be the first ones hired on Bay Street to play Harvey Specter and wear $5000 suits. The bad news is that tuition is now about $30,000 a year. So you go deep in a financial hole, to hopefully pull yourself out of it sooner rather than later. Also, living in downtown Toronto is really not cheap. So get used to commuting on the subway. Not really the Specter lifestyle for your three years. The school’s good at just about every type of law too, and there isn’t a textbook in this country that is at least co-penned by one U of T prof. U of T only looks at your best three years of undergrad when determining your marks.
UBC – Also an extremely competitive school, with very high entrance averages. Part of UBC’s allure tends to be that it’s probably the best value degree in the country, with a comparable standing to U of T but quite literally half the price tag – BC froze their grad school tuition rates a few decades ago and it’s now made their law schools incredibly attractive. As an added bonus, there are only three (relatively small) law schools in the heavily populated province, and so there’s a good chance that you’ll find articling positions upon graduation. Vancouver living isn’t too cheap either. UBC ignores your grad school marks and will drop your lowest undergrad marks when calculating GPA.
McGill – This is a bit of a strange case, because McGill tends to have very high GPA averages but relatively lower LSAT scores. This is mostly because it teaches both English common law and Quebec Code Civil, and their Civil Code program doesn’t require students to write the LSAT (duh, because it’s in English). So the LSAT score it posts is a little misleading, and there’s quite a few students who are at the school that never wrote it. Nonetheless, if you have any interest in practicing Quebec law, this is absolutely the best school to do so. McGill also has, in my opinion, the best school brand in the country, and anywhere in the US and Europe will know, and be impressed by, a McGill graduate.
Tier Two – The Great Mushy Middle
Once we’ve dealt with the three really big, famous, and fancy law schools, then we need to deal with everyone in the middle. Unlike in the US, where schools are carefully streamed into certain scores, there are a core group of six schools in Canada that claim identical entrance averages – usually a low A-, and an LSAT of 162. Someone with a ton of time on their hands might apply to them all, but an astute reader and stats nerd (like me!) can figure out that even with the same averages, they are not all alike; each school has a tendency to pick students with a certain ‘mixture’ of the two. Furthermore, students with pretty strong grades might get two or three acceptances, and so each school has a tendency to specialize in certain fields of law. So some research, and knowing your own grades, will give you a pretty good idea on where to go.
UVic – Picks students in probably the most straightforward way. It just looks at your LSAT and GPA and then takes those with the best combo. Since the school gives 50% of its consideration to your LSAT grades, it has a tendency of picking students with higher LSATs relative to their GPA – someone with a B+ average but a 165 stands a very strong chance of going here. They also make you write a personal statement just because. Goods: smallest class size out of the six (only 110 students!), and focuses on public law, mostly environmental and Aboriginal laws. Also the cheapest law school in the country, with a tuition of around $10,000/year. Bads: not great international exchange opportunities, and as pretty as Victoria is, the school is kinda parked in the centre of a 1960s subdivision.
Western – Puts a ton of emphasis on your personal statements, and seems to care about the LSAT more than a number of other schools. In 2015, it claimed an LSAT average of 163! It also completely ignores your grad school marks. Goods: second-smallest class size of the six (170), and designs their program so first year students take all of their classes with the same 20 students. Has a fantastic exchange program and is considered to be the second-best school in the country for business law, behind U of T. Bads: relatively expensive ($20,000/year), and London, Ontario.
Queen’s – tends to take students with very high GPAs and less impressive LSAT scores. It tends to train students with a focus of pushing them towards legal academia, and most of their professors are known more for their writing than their teaching. Goods: strong public law program and academia-focused faculty – tons of textbooks are also written by Queen’s professors. Bads: I’m skeptical of some of the students they seem to let in – people will get into the program with a 4.0 GPA in a relatively simple undergrad, but then a garbage LSAT score (158, in this circumstance)
Dalhousie – Another GPA-focused school. Much like UVic, it calculates almost entirely its marks from GPA and LSAT, but puts a much bigger weight on the GPA side of things. Claims to choose applicants by reserving a good number of spots for Nova Scotians. Has a really neat combined MBA/JD program, which can offset the ridiculous tuition that would accompany an MBA/JD program. Goods: it’s Halifax. It tends to dominate law firms in Atlantic Canada, and I’ve heard that it’s relatively easy to get work out there, if the firms are hiring. Bads: I hope you like rain!
Osgoode – Despite its name, this is York University’s law school. The school itself is on York’s campus, not in Osgoode Hall in downtown Toronto. Don’t let them try to trick you otherwise! This school, like Western, puts quite a bit of emphasis on the personal statement. Goods: focus is a strange combination of business laws and criminal law, as the school churns out tons of Crown prosecutors and defence attorneys. Bads: York is a savage hellscape in North Toronto. My brother describes the campus as “a 1960s concrete bunker in a sea of grass.” This is one of the largest law programs in the country (~300 students), and it is famous for an extremely competitive atmosphere amongst the students. It’s the second most expensive law school in the country, about $27,000/year last I checked.
U of A – I literally know nothing about this school, other than it’s in Edmonton. So you’re on your own here.
Tier Three – The Regional Schools
There’s a demand for lawyers just about everywhere in Canada, but obviously, they tend to gravitate towards big cities (read: Toronto and Ottawa). So there’s a number of smaller universities around the country that offer a law program specific to the province that they’re in. Usually, these schools will have lower entrance averages, but they cover for this by giving preference to applicants from the area around the school, as encouragement to keep the lawyers in the area. I’ll just list them, because this is starting to take awhile to write all this out, and this paper has already gotten way longer than I anticipated.
Lakehead, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Thompson Rivers (brand new!), UNB, Moncton, and I probably missed a couple but you get the drift.
The Curious Case of UWindsor
For the life of me, I’m still confused how this university got a law school, but oh well. The law school itself is really and truly not a bad place, even though it gets a ton of flack from lawyers and other applicants. It’s considered to be the ‘lowest’ Ontario law school with the least reknown. The school doesn’t publish its entrance averages, which to an extent demonstrates its own point. But the school does have some really neat programs – there’s a joint-degree program with the University of Detroit Mercy, which will let you graduate with both an American and Canadian law degree, letting you practice in both countries. It also has a very strong social work and JD program and is considered to be a great school for studying family law.
The Curious Case of uOttawa
Very strange things have happened at this law school. About five years ago, on an admissions error, the school accidentally let too many students into the program. They never fixed it (obviously on purpose). Now the program is 310 English law students and 80 French ones, creating a whopping 390 students a year, and giving it the title of the largest law school in the country. Like McGill, uOttawa offers both English and Quebec law programs, in both languages. Like McGill, only the English program writes the LSAT, so they don’t publish their LSAT averages, though it’s commonly understood to be lower than the six schools listed in Tier Two. They specialize in public policy law, and I believe they’ve also got a part-time program available. What’s scary about this school is that it used to be one of the very best law schools in the country, but, over time, it has actually fallen in reputation and rankings pretty much universally. So buyer beware.
Daniel, my grades and LSAT score aren’t good enough for these places, what are my options?
In my opinion, law school is really really tough and a lot of work; there’s a reason why schools are always so selective about these sorts of things, because it’s really not for everyone. That being said, there are other options, indeed, IF you really really really really really really really really really really really really really want to pay a fortune.
In general, there will always be a law school in the US that will take you, no matter what. But you likely need some sort of scholarship, because these degrees usually cost around $60,000/year.
New Zealand and Australia are also expensive options. Bond University in Brisbane actually offers Canadian law courses, and it’s common for Canadian students to go there, get part of their degree, and then transfer back into Canada to finish it. Each course you take will cost you between $5000-7500 though.
UK law schools are designed quite differently, where students can actually go and enter them directly out of high school. There are some good ones (holla at Oxford), but there are also some real shitty ones. Because of this direct from high school component, the entrance requirements are quite a bit different and I’m not entirely sure how they work.
Finally, there’s India and South Africa. The schools exist and do have some good reknown. But again, I’d imagine it would be extremely tough to transfer your degree back to Canada.
What did you do?
I made a couple small mistakes in my applications. When I applied, I had about a 78-79% average depending on the school calculating it, and I only ever wrote the LSAT once, and scored a 162. I applied to Dalhousie’s MBA program (but not their JD), UVic, Western, uOttawa, UWindsor, Lakehead, and Queen’s. I got my first acceptance in early December for uOttawa, I heard from UWindsor in January, and then UVic and Western at roughly the same time in April. I was waitlisted in January at Lakehead, with the understanding that I would get a spot in the school if they could not fill it with Northern Ontario students. If I were to do it again, and based on how my marks were, I would have likely not bothered to apply to Queen’s, and instead applied to Dalhousie. I chose Western over UVic mainly because my interests lay in civil law, not public law, and job prospects are very strong for Western grads.
More than anything, don’t go into this thinking that you’re going to be so much less intelligent than everyone else. There are definitely still some dolts in my class.
I hope this all helps! What a great way to kill an hour instead of doing actual work."
