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.
