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In 2024, the Law Societies of Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society surveyed articling students and new lawyers as well as principals, mentors and recruiters. These surveys were a follow-up to the 2019 articling surveys to see whether the articling process has changed, and what areas still need work. Reports on the Manitoba results of the 2019 and 2024 surveys are listed below.
NEW! Cross-Provincial Comparison report
An analysis of the data across the jurisdictions has now been completed to produce a Cross-Provincial Comparison report.
Key findings:
The Cross-Provincial Comparison report once again looked at areas including training and mentorship, discrimination and harassment, as well as workload and compensation. Key Manitoba-specific findings are below:
Training and Mentorship
Student and new lawyer respondents from Manitoba gave comparable feedback to respondents from other provinces with respect to feeling prepared for entering the legal profession. However, a higher number of Manitoba respondents indicated that they did not receive adequate feedback on their work performance and skills during their articles.
Compensation
Feedback from student and new lawyer respondents suggest that a lack of meaningful compensation for internationally trained lawyers is a more prevalent issue in Manitoba than in the other participating provinces. 61% of Manitoba respondents indicated that not getting paid or getting paid minimally was a key challenge, compared to 45% of respondents across all participating provinces.
Discrimination and Harassment
The report shows that experiences of discrimination and/or harassment during articling are on par with all provinces, but Manitoba respondents indicated they were less likely to report those experiences to an authority than their counterparts from other provinces. Interestingly, principal, mentor and recruiter respondents from Manitoba gave greater acknowledgement to issues of discrimination and harassment faced by students, than their counterparts from other provinces.
Next Steps
The Cross-Provincial Comparison report offers valuable insights and identifies similar themes across the jurisdictions. This will allow the provinces to seek opportunities for collaboration on next steps as we continue our work to enhance the articling experience and entry level practice.
2024 Survey
Background Information
In May 2024, the Law Society of Manitoba, together with the Law Societies of Alberta and Saskatchewan, once again surveyed articling students, new lawyers and principals, this time joined by the Law Society of British Columbia and the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society. This survey was a follow-up to the 2019 articling surveys to assess how the articling experience has changed and identify areas for improvement.
The surveys aimed to help the law societies better understand the articling student experience and evaluate how well we are preparing new lawyers. The 2024 surveys were similar to those from 2019, allowing for a comparison of results. Some questions were updated to capture new information, such as the impact of the pandemic on the articling experience.
Survey Results
In Manitoba, 108 articling students and new lawyers, as well as 45 principals, recruiters and mentors completed the surveys. The same third-party consultant from the 2019 surveys was engaged for support on survey development, as well as survey analysis and reporting. The linked report below provides a detailed analysis of these survey results, prepared by Dr. Svitlana Winters.
Key Findings
Overall, the survey results provide valuable insight on a number of issues, especially in the areas of lawyer competence and preparedness, quality of mentorship, and equity, diversity and inclusion. While the results confirm positive aspects of articling such as the value of hands on legal experience, they also highlight troubling disparities in the articling experience for many internationally trained students, who appear to experience higher levels of harassment and discrimination and are not always compensated for the work that they do during their articles.
Next Steps
These results highlight opportunities for the Law Society to raise awareness of available equity resources and consider initiatives to improve the articling experience for all students. Moving forward, a cross-jurisdictional analysis will be conducted to compare articling experiences across the participating provinces.
2019 Survey
Background Information
In May 2019, the Law Society of Manitoba in collaboration with the Law Societies in Alberta and Saskatchewan conducted two surveys—one for principals and one for articling students and new lawyers—to better understand the state of the articling system across the three provinces. The goal of the surveys was to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the experiences and supports that articling students are receiving, issues related to discrimination or harassment and how prepared articling students and new lawyers are for entry level practice.
2019 Survey Results
In Manitoba, the survey was completed by 83 articling students and 48 principals, recruiters and mentors. The survey revealed several key findings regarding the articling experiences. To learn more download the final report by clicking the link below.
