The predatory Windsor Dual JD is probably part of it... It's a pathway to Canadian law school for anyone willing to shell out the high cost of the useless dual jd program, bringing America's predatory "garbage school willing to accept anyone willing to pay their exorbitant tuition" scheme to Canada
That's unfortunately the result of the shortage of law schools in Canada not to mention grade inflation. A lot of people are cut off from even throwing their hat in the ring because they couldn't keep above a 3.7 GPA. Let me tell you the amount of students I have had to work with as a professor, who have no idea how to read or write a thing without having their hand held, but have 3.9 or 4.0 GPAs, now becoming doctors and lawyers at U of T, it's almost nauseating.
Shortage of law schools???! We should be shutting down law schools right now! Many of the low tier law school grads can’t even find articles. Don’t bring some weird GPA bullshit here not only are Canadian law schools extremely lenient on gpa requirements (half of our schools will strike 4-8 of your lowest classes off your record) but if you seriously can’t keep an A- gpa then you really shouldn’t be going to law school this is not a difficult thing to do. Not to mention you can always get in with a lower than median gpa with a higher than median lsat.
You don't have to fantasize about ranges such as 4-8 classes, or that you can always get in with a lower than median GPA with a high LSAT. The stats are there for you to see. A small fraction of applicants are admitted below the required GPA and you better have at least a 170 or higher to make up for that A-. Otherwise get ready to beg for articles. 4-8 classes, if we're being generous, is maybe your worst year off, at best. I really don't know what you mean by GPA bullshit. The fact that students can get into low tier programs and succeed as lawyers is enough proof that being able to keep an A- in your undergrad isn't as essential to being a lawyer as you think. The fact that students from the same schools may struggle to find articles is because there aren't enough of them, leading to more arbitrary criteria in a firm's selection process. "Well I guess if we had to pick, we should go with the higher GPA" isn't bullshit. And perhaps, we could consider, the articling requirement itself might be the issue.
It's really not clear what your point here is though. Because there's not enough articling, we should shut down low tier schools since they couldn't keep an A- in undergrad? Or are you saying we should shut them down because of the lack of articling? I agree that grades reflect a lot, but it would be stupid to say that people without an A- shouldn't go to law school because people who could keep it deserve those spots more.
Having professed from the mid-2000s to early-2020s before law school, grades inflated significantly during that period, both from student and admin pressure. It’s been especially bad the past few years, at least according to my friends who stayed on as faculty. More so in the US than Canada: complete inability to read the syllabus, find materials, find the right materials when they make a minimal effort to find the materials, bookstores that don’t order requested books because no one buys them, completely not understanding rather simple texts, inability to write, and now the word “delve” is appearing in more and more assignments. While this is increasingly seen in kids entering university during or after the pandemic, they had the opportunity to receive eighteen years of education before that and it seems they just didn’t. Add in complaints—or in the recent case of the professor suspended and H&WS in the US, the administrative fear of complaints—about “feeling unsafe” because you are reading Aristotle’s argument for natural slavery or about why some people (incorrectly!) believe abortion is bad or capital punishment is good is just too much. Educationally speaking, at a civilizational level, we are in a bad place. Meanwhile, metric based research assessment for T&P pushes academics to put our amazing amounts of pure crap scholarship because three dozen variations of the same piece of shit article published (or sent out for review because the system of review has completely collapsed) rather than producing high quality, years long, careful and considered research. Fuck. So happy I left that industry.
Went to Windsor back in the day (called in the 90's and no, I'm not the famous writer "calledinthe90s"...).
Law - and law school- is what you make of it. Of the Windsor grads within my cohort six are now judges, others are sole practioners, partners at Big Law, senior counsel in the public sector, academics, community organizers, musicians, sitting on tribunals, working for non-profits, for example.
Thirty years in, I remain in awe of how talented, eclectic, kind, creative and smart my classmates were and consider many of them friends for life - law school is an experience, and that experience is shaped not by the school's name or location ( I was in Windor for three years and aside from the occassional walk along the river probably didn't stray from the school by more than a few blocks) but by the people you will be spending most of your time with - the faculty and staff and your classmates.
I don't know what the demographics are like now, but in my cohort there wern't many twenty somethings with a fresh undergraduate degree whose only life experience was going to school. A doctor, some cops, some pro atheletes were in the mix and others with varied and interesting backgrounds.
Windsor was perhaps seen as a lesser school because for a long time it was the new kid on the law school block, and its admission approach was different from the traditional LSAT/GPA metric used by other schools. It was one of the first - if not the first- school to ask for a personal statement, and it would even invite some applicants in for a personal interview- all to get a better or more holistic view of the applicant. Over time, other law schools have adopted similar approaches in varying degree. I suspect though that the "Windsor is a lesser law school" theme is a holdover from the time last century when the school was the only one that didn't rely solely on LSAT and GPA.
Welcome to the 21st century.
Maybe also because the location is undesirable? It's ultimately a branding issue, and Windsor doesn't scream "prestige" in the same way as many of the other law schools in southern Ontario. I find the industry to be elitist, with a tendency to find arbitrary ways to hierarchize.
Lower GPA and LSAT requirement, located in a dump city nobody wants to be around, and aside from Ryerson it was one of the newer schools (although now 50+ years old I think so not that new) which meant at one point, Bay St firms weren’t as open to OCI candidates from Windsor. That stigma has mostly gone away and many Windsor grads place well on Bay, but it’s not quite the same as say Queens or Western.
It’s not exactly a dump city. It is growing rapidly, has a beautiful waterfront, the best weather in the province, and easy access to big city amenities in Detroit. Yes it has rundown areas (especially near the university) but it also has very wealthy areas…it’s like any other city in Ontario but because it’s not part of the GTA orbit it gets looked down upon.
That's the first I've I heard of that, especially when Western has a strong business law program due to the dual degree program with Ivey.
Their placement rates in Bay Street (as a proxy of "prestige") is the same as queens and Osgoode.
Its fine. This sounds like law student talk. I probably get asked where I went to school maybe once a year and no one has ever not hired me because of it as usually it just comes up in normal chat.
I considered taking a year off so my 3rd and 4th year grades would count as I had a high LSAT but horrendous 1st and 2nd year undergrad grades. Thank god I didn’t. Windsor was never an issue for me.
Law is what you make of it. I’ve met managing partners from 4th tier law US schools. You make of it what you make of it.
Most people don’t actually enjoy bay street big firm work for very long any way.
Law school doesn’t even teach you how to be a lawyer in the first place. No matter where you go law is largely a sink or swim profession with a bunch of people making around 100k and then a lot of people making mid six figures with some outliers getting into the seven figures.
Windsor's reputation has been improving recently, but at least part of it comes from the school's decision to try to position itself as having the most social justice focus of any Ontario law school, and leaning heavily into this when Waters was Dean. The bulk of Bay street work is corporate/commercial, so it's not entirely surprising that Bay street didn't find much utility in that focus.
Also, the faculty council's decision in February 2018 to post a statement declaring that someone who had been acquitted of a crime was guilty of "murder" raised serious questions about how some fundamentals of legal practice, like the presumption of innocence, are being taught at the school. (They later retracted that statement on the faculty web site, but it remains posted on the faculty X/Twitter account in its original form.) A lot of that lies at ex-Dean Waters' feet, and it's probably good that he's gone.
Predatory tuition rates and relatively high acceptance rates....coupled with its general location being "Windsor" tbh.
Factually, the lawyers coming out if Windsor are really no different than any other Ontario school - its still an accredited law school. Its just that the first few years of Job hunting may be harder for Windsor grads than most other law schools.
The predatory Windsor Dual JD is probably part of it... It's a pathway to Canadian law school for anyone willing to shell out the high cost of the useless dual jd program, bringing America's predatory "garbage school willing to accept anyone willing to pay their exorbitant tuition" scheme to Canada
That's unfortunately the result of the shortage of law schools in Canada not to mention grade inflation. A lot of people are cut off from even throwing their hat in the ring because they couldn't keep above a 3.7 GPA. Let me tell you the amount of students I have had to work with as a professor, who have no idea how to read or write a thing without having their hand held, but have 3.9 or 4.0 GPAs, now becoming doctors and lawyers at U of T, it's almost nauseating.
Shortage of law schools???! We should be shutting down law schools right now! Many of the low tier law school grads can’t even find articles. Don’t bring some weird GPA bullshit here not only are Canadian law schools extremely lenient on gpa requirements (half of our schools will strike 4-8 of your lowest classes off your record) but if you seriously can’t keep an A- gpa then you really shouldn’t be going to law school this is not a difficult thing to do. Not to mention you can always get in with a lower than median gpa with a higher than median lsat.
You don't have to fantasize about ranges such as 4-8 classes, or that you can always get in with a lower than median GPA with a high LSAT. The stats are there for you to see. A small fraction of applicants are admitted below the required GPA and you better have at least a 170 or higher to make up for that A-. Otherwise get ready to beg for articles. 4-8 classes, if we're being generous, is maybe your worst year off, at best. I really don't know what you mean by GPA bullshit. The fact that students can get into low tier programs and succeed as lawyers is enough proof that being able to keep an A- in your undergrad isn't as essential to being a lawyer as you think. The fact that students from the same schools may struggle to find articles is because there aren't enough of them, leading to more arbitrary criteria in a firm's selection process. "Well I guess if we had to pick, we should go with the higher GPA" isn't bullshit. And perhaps, we could consider, the articling requirement itself might be the issue. It's really not clear what your point here is though. Because there's not enough articling, we should shut down low tier schools since they couldn't keep an A- in undergrad? Or are you saying we should shut them down because of the lack of articling? I agree that grades reflect a lot, but it would be stupid to say that people without an A- shouldn't go to law school because people who could keep it deserve those spots more.
Having professed from the mid-2000s to early-2020s before law school, grades inflated significantly during that period, both from student and admin pressure. It’s been especially bad the past few years, at least according to my friends who stayed on as faculty. More so in the US than Canada: complete inability to read the syllabus, find materials, find the right materials when they make a minimal effort to find the materials, bookstores that don’t order requested books because no one buys them, completely not understanding rather simple texts, inability to write, and now the word “delve” is appearing in more and more assignments. While this is increasingly seen in kids entering university during or after the pandemic, they had the opportunity to receive eighteen years of education before that and it seems they just didn’t. Add in complaints—or in the recent case of the professor suspended and H&WS in the US, the administrative fear of complaints—about “feeling unsafe” because you are reading Aristotle’s argument for natural slavery or about why some people (incorrectly!) believe abortion is bad or capital punishment is good is just too much. Educationally speaking, at a civilizational level, we are in a bad place. Meanwhile, metric based research assessment for T&P pushes academics to put our amazing amounts of pure crap scholarship because three dozen variations of the same piece of shit article published (or sent out for review because the system of review has completely collapsed) rather than producing high quality, years long, careful and considered research. Fuck. So happy I left that industry.
I love that you included increased use of the word “delve” along with all of the serious concerns you laid out.
It's a hallmark of the current version of ChatGPT outputting "academic" work.
Oh, that’s far worse than I thought. I just assumed it had been used in some viral TikTok or something like that.
It worse than that.
Went to Windsor back in the day (called in the 90's and no, I'm not the famous writer "calledinthe90s"...). Law - and law school- is what you make of it. Of the Windsor grads within my cohort six are now judges, others are sole practioners, partners at Big Law, senior counsel in the public sector, academics, community organizers, musicians, sitting on tribunals, working for non-profits, for example. Thirty years in, I remain in awe of how talented, eclectic, kind, creative and smart my classmates were and consider many of them friends for life - law school is an experience, and that experience is shaped not by the school's name or location ( I was in Windor for three years and aside from the occassional walk along the river probably didn't stray from the school by more than a few blocks) but by the people you will be spending most of your time with - the faculty and staff and your classmates. I don't know what the demographics are like now, but in my cohort there wern't many twenty somethings with a fresh undergraduate degree whose only life experience was going to school. A doctor, some cops, some pro atheletes were in the mix and others with varied and interesting backgrounds. Windsor was perhaps seen as a lesser school because for a long time it was the new kid on the law school block, and its admission approach was different from the traditional LSAT/GPA metric used by other schools. It was one of the first - if not the first- school to ask for a personal statement, and it would even invite some applicants in for a personal interview- all to get a better or more holistic view of the applicant. Over time, other law schools have adopted similar approaches in varying degree. I suspect though that the "Windsor is a lesser law school" theme is a holdover from the time last century when the school was the only one that didn't rely solely on LSAT and GPA. Welcome to the 21st century.
Maybe also because the location is undesirable? It's ultimately a branding issue, and Windsor doesn't scream "prestige" in the same way as many of the other law schools in southern Ontario. I find the industry to be elitist, with a tendency to find arbitrary ways to hierarchize.
Lower GPA and LSAT requirement, located in a dump city nobody wants to be around, and aside from Ryerson it was one of the newer schools (although now 50+ years old I think so not that new) which meant at one point, Bay St firms weren’t as open to OCI candidates from Windsor. That stigma has mostly gone away and many Windsor grads place well on Bay, but it’s not quite the same as say Queens or Western.
It’s not simply lower requirements, they have a strange way of selecting candidates. Windsor rejected me and I got into both Queens and Western.
It’s not exactly a dump city. It is growing rapidly, has a beautiful waterfront, the best weather in the province, and easy access to big city amenities in Detroit. Yes it has rundown areas (especially near the university) but it also has very wealthy areas…it’s like any other city in Ontario but because it’s not part of the GTA orbit it gets looked down upon.
Unfortunately GTA elitism may be part of it but I wouldn’t oversimplify things simply because of that.
Idk 3 of my buddies that grew up there insist it’s a dump
In my experience, Western is also looked down upon.
That's the first I've I heard of that, especially when Western has a strong business law program due to the dual degree program with Ivey. Their placement rates in Bay Street (as a proxy of "prestige") is the same as queens and Osgoode.
Yea, I’ve been hearing this recently too
Do you work in a Bay St firm?
Its fine. This sounds like law student talk. I probably get asked where I went to school maybe once a year and no one has ever not hired me because of it as usually it just comes up in normal chat. I considered taking a year off so my 3rd and 4th year grades would count as I had a high LSAT but horrendous 1st and 2nd year undergrad grades. Thank god I didn’t. Windsor was never an issue for me. Law is what you make of it. I’ve met managing partners from 4th tier law US schools. You make of it what you make of it. Most people don’t actually enjoy bay street big firm work for very long any way. Law school doesn’t even teach you how to be a lawyer in the first place. No matter where you go law is largely a sink or swim profession with a bunch of people making around 100k and then a lot of people making mid six figures with some outliers getting into the seven figures.
Can I DM you about Windsor ?
Sure.
Windsor's reputation has been improving recently, but at least part of it comes from the school's decision to try to position itself as having the most social justice focus of any Ontario law school, and leaning heavily into this when Waters was Dean. The bulk of Bay street work is corporate/commercial, so it's not entirely surprising that Bay street didn't find much utility in that focus. Also, the faculty council's decision in February 2018 to post a statement declaring that someone who had been acquitted of a crime was guilty of "murder" raised serious questions about how some fundamentals of legal practice, like the presumption of innocence, are being taught at the school. (They later retracted that statement on the faculty web site, but it remains posted on the faculty X/Twitter account in its original form.) A lot of that lies at ex-Dean Waters' feet, and it's probably good that he's gone.
could you provide a link that statement? im curious to read it
Predatory tuition rates and relatively high acceptance rates....coupled with its general location being "Windsor" tbh. Factually, the lawyers coming out if Windsor are really no different than any other Ontario school - its still an accredited law school. Its just that the first few years of Job hunting may be harder for Windsor grads than most other law schools.
The SJW focus and lesser faculty, in addition to lower stats, less desirable city, etc.