Moving forward with the Ryerson law school

A few weeks ago, the provincial government made an announcement regarding funding eligibility for the Ryerson law school and I want to provide the community with an update.

For some time, Ryerson has been seeking approval from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities to make the law school students OSAP eligible. We are not seeking approval for the school, nor are we seeking additional funding. While the provincial government’s announcement was a minor setback, we are committed to working with the government to access funding support for our students.

As you may have seen in recent media coverage (external link) , we have decided to move forward with the Ryerson law school.

The Quality Assurance Council, the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, and the Law Society of Ontario (LSO) have all reviewed and approved our law school proposal and the LSO has passed a resolution to license Ryerson graduates. It has also been reviewed and approved by the Ryerson Board of Governors and the Ryerson Senate.

We know from our broad consultations with students, lawyers, employers of lawyers, and other stakeholders across the province that there is an access issue in the legal community. There remains a large unmet need for legal services and a need for a different type of lawyer.

We know that there is a shortage of articling positions, that's why Ryerson worked with the Law Society of Ontario to create an alternative to articling with the Law Practice Program (LPP). The LPP at Ryerson is in its fifth year, and continues to have a 100 per cent placement rate for our students. Moreover, Ryerson’s Legal Innovation Zone (LIZ) (external link)  has generated millions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of jobs in under three years. These are different approaches to legal education and they are producing wonderful results.

We don't see Ryerson as a competitor to other law schools in Ontario, nor should we. There is a need for tradition but at Ryerson if there’s one thing we know it’s that there's also a need for change. Ryerson is offering a different type of law school, which will train 150 law students each year to meet the needs of small businesses and ordinary citizens across Ontario – and to do so in a tech-savvy and entrepreneurial fashion. 

We also know that other law schools in Canada have moved forward without a provincial funding model in place. It is our sincere hope that we can avoid this scenario, particularly as our funding model proposal was built on using existing funding provided to us, with no additional funds requested.

It is also our hope that the government agrees that this is an opportunity to tap into an under-served market, to keep smart young minds in the province, and to help build small and dynamic businesses in the legal sector. We hope they agree that these students would be just as deserving and worthy of OSAP as other law students across the province.

I look forward to providing more details about our law school and our efforts to transform legal education in Ontario in the New Year.

Mohamed Lachemi
President