Category Archives: Governance

Resolving the legal education disconnect

By Jordan Furlong | Published: November 20, 2009
In conversation last week with a law school professor, the subject of law firms’ tunnel vision when recruiting law graduates came up. Firms focus relentlessly on the students with the highest grades, the professor lamented, even though these students can be one-dimensional performers with an affinity for the academic environment and no competing pressures outside [...]
Also posted in Law School | 1 Comment

The UK crucible

By Jordan Furlong | Published: June 19, 2009
North American lawyers have been fretting lately about the effects of this recession and what it means for their future. But the recession is only an amplifier or accelerator of change, not its source, and it doesn’t tell us much about the shape of things to come. If you  really want to know what the [...]
Also posted in Competition, Innovation | 2 Comments

The evolution of lawyer regulation

By Jordan Furlong | Published: March 3, 2009
The thing about change is that once it gets rolling, it’s almost impossible to control and can go in directions you neither anticipated nor like very much. That thought occurred to me while reading a report issued last week by the Legal Services Policy Institute, the think-tank division of UK legal training company The College [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Talent | 5 Comments

Podcast on conflicts of interest

By Jordan Furlong | Published: August 20, 2008
Law21 was quiet for a week while I worked the Canadian Bar Association’s Canadian Legal Conference in Quebec City. Among the highlights for me was moderating a podcast on the CBA’s just-released Final Report of its Task Force on Conflicts of Interest. You can access the podcast by clicking the third link in the [...]
Also posted in Clients | Leave a comment

Here come the orderlies

By Jordan Furlong | Published: May 13, 2008
This Law Times article, about changes made in 2006 to Ontario’s Law Society Act that have suddenly galvanized lawyers in the province, makes for an interesting read. Those amendments brought paralegals (non-lawyers providing limited legal services) under the regulatory authority of the law society, which now refers to both lawyers and paralegals as its “licensees” [...]
Posted in Governance | 1 Comment

Micro law schools

By Jordan Furlong | Published: March 24, 2008
Two interesting articles by Alex Dimson at Law Is Cool today have me thinking about a possible next step in the evolution of law schools. Two Ontario universities have applied to set up law schools: Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. Alex reports that Lakehead’s application, although on shakier ground [...]
Also posted in Law School | Leave a comment

Transforming the practising bar

By Jordan Furlong | Published: February 6, 2008
If you’d like a glimpse of the legal profession of the near-to-mid-future, look to London. Yesterday, the UK’s Bar Standards Board launched a consultation paper concerning the effect on barristers of the new Legal Services Act, which received Royal Assent last October. (The Solicitors Regulation Authority addressed the LSA’s impact earlier.) Here’s LegalWeek and The [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Innovation | Leave a comment

Articling abolition? A groundbreaking LSUC report

By Jordan Furlong | Published: January 30, 2008
It arrived quietly and without fanfare. I’ve seen no reports of it in the mainstream media or the legal press. In fact, the young-lawyer-focused law blogs Precedent and Law Is Cool are the only places I’ve seen talk about it so far. But the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Licensing and Accreditation Task Force [...]
Also posted in CLE, Careers, Law School, New Lawyers | 4 Comments

Divided profession, collective governance

By Jordan Furlong | Published: January 8, 2008
For your consideration: here’s a list of all the governing and/or regulatory bodies for health-care professionals in the province of Ontario: College of Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists College of Chiropodists College of Chiropractors College of Dental Hygienists Royal College of Dental Surgeons College of Dental Technologists College of Dietitians College of Massage Therapists College of Medical Laboratory Technologists College of Medical Radiation Technologists College of Nurses College [...]
Posted in Governance | 2 Comments

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