There are many negative stereotypes surrounding lawyers, such as being hyper-zealous, aggressive, soulless, and solely driven by monetary rewards. This stereotyping may be reinforced through the admission processes put in place by law schools in who they accept. To combat this stereotype, some law schools are creating classes, seminars, and workshops to promote ethical lawyering themes such as access to justice. Through the promotion of equitable access to justice and demonstrating the value of pro bono work, schools can help shape compassionate lawyers. However, there is a missing link between law schools promoting access to justice and lawyers wanting to implement an equitable approach to justice. Therefore, law schools need to allow face to face interview processes to admit empathetic individuals which would provide the foundation to tangibly work towards increasing access to justice.
As many have stated before, “The system is not broken. It was built this way” (Carmichael, “Anti-Black Systemic Racism in Legal Profession.”), Carmichael insinuates that the present legal system was created to underserve and criminalize minorities, and act as a monopoly catering towards the middle-upper, white echelon of society. The legal system reflects and supports the colonial, patriarchal and capitalist society in which we live. Backhouse makes note of this exclusiveness that “[t]he very concept of ‘professionalism’ has been inextricably linked […] to masculinity, whiteness, class privilege, and Protestantism” (Backhouse 3). For decades, law schools have imposed restrictive guidelines regarding their educational and socioeconomic requirements on who could practice law, and inadvertently became the gatekeepers of who would access law. The supposed justice system was not set up to support justice, but to maintain white supremacy. By finding empathetic individuals to become law students would help shape the future of law into a more equitable justice system. Whilst the Canadian government could provide more support to the legal system in regards to providing equitable services, lawyers must also be actively willing to support and represent underserved communities and individuals. One way in which they can aid in this process is by implementing new admission strategies such as face to face interviews.
There are disadvantages for face-to-face interviews from interview bias to interview anxiety, yet interviews have been an integral part of job processes and other fashions of schooling admittance, such as medical schools. Currently, the primary method to assess candidates’ personalities is through their personal essays. Personal essays, although individualistic, are catered to create a persona a school desires, yet can be far from the reality of the actual individual. While personal essays can be a useful tool for admissions, students can easily falsify or exaggerate their personal and academic success.
There are two main advantages of interviews in the law admission setting. Firstly, implementing interviews will provide candidates the opportunity to authenticate and elaborate on their personal essays whilst demonstrating their personality. Interviews can allow candidates to apply their personal experiences to law related scenarios. This connection would not normally be available exclusively through personal essays. Secondly, interviews allow for admission panels to identify empathy and interpersonal skills, both which should be considered essential to becoming a successful lawyer. Law schools can help develop these characteristics; however, every individual should innately have these traits as they should want to increase their services to marginalized communities. We must treat access to justice as an essential service just like universal healthcare. As Trevor Farrow puts it, “It is for this reason that we should all care about and understand, at least to some extent, what justice is and how to access it, as we do in the case of health care” (Farrow 963). If interviews are necessary for medical schools to admit empathetic individuals to be our next generation of medical providers, law schools need to use that same emotional capacity measurement to choose the future lawyers.
Similarly, to the medical profession, the law as a profession should, as Hutchison states, be “a sophisticated structure of organization, a formal learning process, and the spirit of public service” (Hutchison 9). Hutchison describes elements of administrative processes as well as the passion aspect that drives a person’s decisions to enter law. Lawyers should possess some degree of empathy as well as an inherent desire to support underserved communities and individuals. Empathy can serve as a motivating force for lawyers to create equitable access to justice in neglected communities; thus, shifting the influence for choice of cases from monetary to moral. Furthermore, Hutchison states, “[Law’s] distinguishing feature from other callings is that lawyers […] have ‘great power to influence the private lives and public affairs and, correspondingly, great responsibility to [their] clients and community” (Hutchison 9). Lawyers hold certain privileges and must be able to take responsibility in creating more diverse and equitable access to justice.
Between law schools’ traditional methods of admission, lack of access to justice, and lawyers’ onus to their community, there must be change starting with who will be allowed to become a lawyer, with the institution of interviews. Our Canadian law schools mirror our common law judicial system in the way that they are stable and dependable, while being dynamic and having the ability to change. There is an equity problem pertaining to access to justice across Canadian communities rooted in the set-up of our justice system and the responsibility falls on lawyers. Introducing interview aspects throughout all Canadian law schools to admit empathetic individuals can allow for an increase to access to justice.
Works Cited
Backhouse, Constance. “Gender and race in the construction of ‘legal professionalism’: historical perspectives.” 2003, pp. 1–26.
Carmichael, Akua. “Anti-Black Systemic Racism in Legal Profession.” The Lawyer’s Daily, 16 July 2020.
Farrow, Trevor C.W. “What Is Access to Justice?” Osgoode Hall Law Journal, vol. 51, no. 3, 2014, pp. 957–987.
Hutchinson, Allan C. Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility. Irwin Law, 2006.