We've just completed our student hiring. This summer we have students from Osgoode, Queen's and U of T. They bring diverse backgrounds. One - our grad student this summer - worked for four years for the New Zealand Law Commission. We'll be interested in what we can learn from that. Our undergrad students have degrees in science, philosophy and ethics and history and one has a grad degree in public administration.Since we began hiring students, we've hired from all Ontario law schools (although we have yet to hire from Ottawa's civil law program).
Three of the students will work in our Toronto offices, while one will work from Kingston. We try to bring students working offsite to Toronto two or three times over the summer, partly to give them a better sense of the LCO in action and a chance to meet the other students and the project head with whom they'll be working and partly because we want to make it as easy as possible to work at a distance.
We begin in May with an orientation session that will introduce the students to our vision of law reform and the way we approach our work and our projects and provide them with a refresher on doing research. This is a day that gives a chance for informal discussion, as well as more structured sessions. We bring off-site students to Toronto for the day or longer to give them a chance to work directly with the project head and anyone else working on a particular project.
Each students is assigned primarily to one project to enable her or him to get a deeper insight into how a project is done. If there are opportunities in a project not available in other projects, we try to cover that off (for example, a project may involve consultations over the summer and each student will have a chance to participate). The students will undertake research and write research reports for the most part, but they may also be participating in the consultation process or helping to organize an event - or, yes, proofing a paper, following up a particular point or otherwise doing the "small" and mundane (it might seem) activities that need to be done if the resulting interim report or discussion paper is to be acknowledged for its high quality.We emphasize that our students are responsible for ensuring that their part in the work we do meets the high standards we and others set for it - with, of course, help from the project heads.
At the end of the summer, the students give presentations to their LCO student and lawyer colleagues. Last year, we introduced a mid-summer version of this. Again, this is a chance for everyone to get together, including the off-site students, for a more community-oriented event than concentrating on one's own work too often doesn't allow or encourage.
We have benefitted from our students since we began hiring in the summer of 2008. We also hire over the academic term when the students work for 10 hours a week.
Our student program owes a great deal to our Staff Lawyer, Lauren Bates, who is responsible for hiring, for co-ordinating the work and designing and organizing the orientation and presentation sessions. She has a mentor's attitude and our students (I think, anyway!) and we are fortunate that she plays the role of student supervisor at the LCO.
