Lawyers in Canada

Eugene J. O’Sullivan is a professor of Law and Justice at Laurentian
University.

Lawyers in Canada is a comprehensive study of the legal profession in
Canada written by David Stager, a professor of economics at the
University of Toronto, in collaboration with Harry Arthurs, a professor
of law and president of York University. It was prepared under the
auspices of a research project on the professions in Canada and was
published in association with Statistics Canada. It was written in
response to the growth in the legal profession during the past two
decades and to the changing social, demographic, and economic conditions
in Canada. Throughout the authors apply the techniques of social science
research to a profession that has tended to shy away from introspection.
This is a book whose time has come.

The book comprises six parts. The first part examines some of the major
issues confronting the legal profession in the 1990s. A framework for a
historical, economic, political, and social assessment of the legal
profession is presented. The second part describes the role of law
societies in regulating the profession’s membership and surveys the
services provided by the legal profession. The third part takes the
reader on the journey a prospective lawyer takes: law school, articles
of clerkship, and bar admission or professional training courses. This
part concludes with a statistical portrait of Canada’s lawyers. In the
fourth part, the authors look at lawyers in private practice. The
structure and organization of today’s law offices and the economic and
social pressures they face are examined. The organization of the market
for lawyers’ services is further discussed later in this part, with
reference to lawyers’ fees and earnings in private practice. The fifth
part looks at lawyers in private industry and in the public sector:
lawyers in public administration and in nonprofit organizations, lawyers
and the judiciary, law professors, and lawyers in politics. The final
part looks ahead to the future of the legal profession and its potential
growth and diversification.

The book is rich in statistics relevant to the legal professional—for
example, age, gender, religion, size of practice, place of work,
province, and earnings among lawyers. There is a complete reference
section as well as author and subject indexes.