The University of Toronto Law School is a prestige school from which top student’s are recruited by large business oriented law firms. Almost all students in the law school already hold one or more degrees.
So as to beat their competitors to the cream of the crop, these firms offer top students summer jobs, including summer jobs for first year students, in hopes that a relationship will be formed which will eventually lead to permanent employment a few years down the road.
The competition for the top students is fierce, so remuneration is very high, particularly when compared to the minimal remuneration most law students and young lawyers receive.
The very high remuneration combined with the opportunity to take a position which may lead to permanent employment make the competition for high grades intense.
The only bug in the ointment is that although the first year students are being hired primarily based on their law school grades, they only have first year Christmas practice exams to report by the deadline for applications for summer jobs.
Quite a few students advertised themselves to law firms as holding significantly higher grades than they actually held.
The matter has been investigated by the Law School, and notations placed on the students’ transcripts for three years. A handful may face temporary suspension as well. Although there have been no sanctions, there has been criticism raised against a faculty member who suggested that a response to the problem of excessive competition would be for all first year students to report A grades. There has been a great deal of discussion over the issue of hyper-competitiveness.
In short, all these students will continue on and in a few years apply to the Law Society of Upper Canada to become lawyers.
The Law Society can refuse to let a person become a lawyer if that person is of bad character or reflects poorly on the profession.
My question is: "Should the students who lied about their grades when applying for summer jobs at law firms while in their first year at law school be prohibited by the Law Society from becoming lawyers?"
My opinion is no, these students should not be admitted to the practice of law.
They are adults in their twenties, they are intelligent, and they already hold previous degrees. They are not impressionable youth in their formative years. They were well aware of the seriousness of their offence prior to committing it, but chose to do so anyway. Their ethics were defined as “Since I will get away with it, I will do it.” Their greed outweighed their obligation to honesty and integrity. They can not be trusted.
The practice of law requires trust. Lawyers hold trust accounts. Lawyers make formal and informal undertakings. Lawyers assemble and convey information to clients, other lawyers, and the judiciary. The legal system depends on personal honesty and integrity. These lawyer wanna-be’s have proven that they do not have personal honesty and integrity.
When lawyers go bad, it usually takes considerable time, effort and expense to remove them and attempt to remedy the people they have harmed. To avoid such problems, people without personal honesty and integrity should not be let into the profession in the first place.
Some might say that the penalty is too high relative to the act committed. I do not buy into this, for ultimately the purpose of restricting entry to the bar is to protect clients. I do not believe rehabilitation should come into the equation. One strike and you’re out is what I would like to see.
If, for the moment, one were to place onto the back burner the problem of letting unethical people into the profession, and just consider the effect on the students if they were to have their legal careers terminaed, I still think that these people should not be permitted to become lawyers. These people already have degrees in which they were at the top of their classes (although I have to wonder what other academic frauds they may have participated in to receive such degrees and grades), so finding employment and developing lucrative careers other than in law should not be difficult for any of them. They only have a few months of law school under their belts, so they do not have much invested in their budding legal careers.
Some might say that they will learn their lesson and become responsible. I do not buy into this either, for by this point in their lies they have developed their ethics, and in the future will simply become better at not getting caught. The law school can teach facts and methods of analysis, but it can not teach fundamental ethics. All these people will learn from further legal studies is how to avoid getting caught.
Some might take a relativist position and suggest that some of the student’s honestly did not realize that their fraud was so serious, for we all tell little white lies on occasion. I believe that any law student who already holds a previous degree, but who honestly does not recognize the seriousness of the act of academic fraud when competing for jobs, is far too myopic to be suited to a legal career. A lawyer must balance a great many factors when forming opinions, and must be able to put matters into perspetive. Not being able to recognize that fraud is a fundamental no-no for a lawyer shows a remarkable inability to keep matters in perspective. Any student who can not recognize the difference between a little white lie or slight exageration and a fundamental fraud against one’s profession, one’s employer, one’s school, and one’s classmates, should not be permitted to research an issue for a lawyer, let alone become a lawyer.
There is intense competition for places in Canadian law schools, to the point that almost everyone who makes it into law school easily has the intellectual ability to become a fine lawyer (I say “almost” because every once in a while I come across a lawyer who really is too stupid to function as a laywer). Why should unethical students remain in the program when there are so many deserving students waiting in the wings to replace them? With the University complaining about the problem of excessive competion over grades, then surely the best way to indicte that ethics should hole a primacy over grades would be to dump the dodos. By not doing so the University simply confirms that grades are what matters most. Any loss to the fraudulent students in terms of career limitations would be mitigated entirely by more deserving students taking their places.
The Law Society has the opportunity to indicte what it considers to be acceptable and what it considers to not be acceptable, and also has the ability to indicate what it considers to be determinative concerning admission into the profession of law. It is my opinion that: "In this instance the Law Society of Upper Canada should issue a direction that it will not admit these students to the bar in future years."