Kristina Brousalis tipped me off to this Canadian initiative at giving trainee lawyers ‘Tours of Duty’ through different parts of the legal profession.
Legal Aid Ontario has a Lawyer Workforce Strategy, that invites both students and existing lawyers to take part in a tour through different types of legal jobs. This gives them a chance to build their own portfolio of work and skills — and also better determine which path best suits them.
Overview of the Lawyer Workforce Strategy
The Lawyer Workforce Strategy is Legal Aid Ontario’s (LAO’s) corporate talent management initiative. LAO developed this initiative to help recruit, develop and retain lawyers at LAO. It is open to summer students, articling students, in-house lawyers and new hires.
Designed to create a dynamic, responsive, and flexible legal team that can ensure high-quality client services across the province, the Lawyer Workforce Strategy provides rewarding and challenging careers for lawyers at LAO.
More than just a job
This initiative exposes summer students, articling students and lawyers to different parts of Ontario and to many different types of legal work.
This diverse experience helps them better understand the inter-connections between and among many areas of law, and gain first-hand knowledge of how the legal aid system works as a whole.
As a result, our summer and articling students can become lawyers equipped to serve clients holistically, and our staff lawyers enjoy the opportunity to learn and grow.
Have you taken part in this program, or know anything more about it? I’m really interested to learn more details about how this type of rotating tour is set up, and what works & doesn’t. Or if you know of other types of rotation-based training, send them along!
