Ex-Dean Makes Amazing Prediction: 25 Law Schools in Canada by 2025
A former Canadian law dean has looked in his crystal ball and made some predictions about legal education in a country that currently has only 16 law schools, all of them public institutions.
Some predictions by Brent Cotter, the former dean of the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan, were made with tongue “planted firmly in check,” Lawyers Weekly reports in a series on law schools. But his prognostications may not sound so unusual to those in the United States. They include:
• By 2025, Canada will have its 25th law school.
• By 2024, Canada will its first privately funded law school.
• By 2020, internship requirements known as “articling” will be abolished and replaced by a national bar exam.
• By 2018, Canada’s first online law school will be approved.
• By 2015, Canadian law schools will have to meet “stringent” accreditation requirements.
Last year, Canada’s 16 common-law schools fielded about 24,000 applications for 2,696 available spots, according to another Lawyers Weekly article in the series. In the United States last year, Cotter told the publication, there were an estimated 83,000 applications for some 45,000 places at 190 ABA-approved law schools.
“It’s significantly easier to get into an ABA-approved law school, on average, than it is to get into a common-law school in Canada,” Cotter said.
