The saddest calls we receive at Assist are usually from articling students who are in difficult work situations. Some situations arise from poor communications or personality clashes, and sometimes there are sometimes actions that can be taken to help get relationships back on track (See, for example, last week’s blog about what principals and firms can do.) But there are other situations that are untenable, and students are forced to consider leaving their positions or the decision is taken out of their hands by termination of their employment.
Not surprisingly, students respond in different ways to challenging articling situations. Some internalize their distress, putting their heads down to just survive until they complete their twelve months. Some react in anger, impetuously conveying their feelings about being treated badly which can cause irremediable job consequences. And others reach out for help, hoping that someone in the legal community can assist them in making their situation manageable or helping them find a new position.
At Assist, we see all three of these main patterns. And we are particularly concerned about students who are so downtrodden that they lack empowerment to ask for help.
So, in today’s blog, I want to talk about how a student in a distressing articling situation can get help, and how those of us who care about students having viable articling experiences can provide support.
Let’s back up to the fall of 2019 when the Law Society of Alberta released its first Articling Student Survey (https://www.lawsociety.ab.ca/2019-articling-survey-results/.) This survey indicated that 30% of articling students (the survey population was articling students and lawyers in their first five years of practice) experienced harassment or discrimination during either the recruitment process or their articles. Assist’s Board of Directors devoted our November retreat that year to brainstorming solutions which Assist could deploy to help students.
Two wonderful initiatives emerged. The first was Pop-Up Peer Support, where a senior Assist volunteer would have “coffee hours” at a coffee shop near a courthouse where students could quickly visit to ask questions or seek help. We implemented these sessions in January of 2020 and adopted the name Red Mug Coffee Circles, with volunteers having red coffee mugs, to aid in identification. But the pandemic descended, and Red Mug Coffee Circles moved online where we continue to provide support and community to a broad pool of legal community members.
I am pleased to announce that Pop-Up Peer Support will resume this fall! Sometimes, articling students need someone that they can ask “is it weird that my firm does…” or “how do I handle a situation where my principal asks me to ….” Pop-Up Peer Support sessions are a great way to have an initial conversation about career-related issues, and since articling students spend time at courthouses regularly, stopping for a quick chat with a helpful lawyer volunteer can be a non-threatening entry point.
Our second initiative was the Articling Student Outreach, which we began in 2020. Teams of volunteers called all the articling students in the province—numbering from about 450 to over 600!—to make sure that students knew that Assist was here to support them. We will be recruiting and training new volunteers so that we can accommodate the increasingly large cohorts of students so please consider if you wish to volunteer and let us know.
Through this program, we reached students who were unaware of Assist and how we provide support, and we also reached students who were disempowered and terrified, feeling that that their principal was watching their every move. These students felt unable to place personal telephone calls during the day, so a phone call coming to them—that they could pretend was a work call—was a godsend. While professional counselling appointment are normally booked by placing a telephone call, we made special arrangements for intake staff to call these students.
My first concern when I talk to a student who is in a problematic articling position is whether their job is having an adverse impact on their health, physical or mental. Students who are having physiological stress symptoms like headaches, stomach problems, heart palpitations, etc. should see their family doctor. And students who are experiencing psychological symptoms of stress can arrange to see an Assist counsellor (a senior level Registered Psychologist who sees lawyers and other professionals extensively). This is our twist on the medical profession’s mantra “First, do no harm”: “First, make sure no harm is being done!”
We also talk to students about the types of issues the student is experiencing (at a high level so that we do not retraumatize them). Types of issues we have discussed include:
- Disrespectful conduct like telling the student they are stupid, losers or zeros. Seriously, this happens!
- Discrimination like mocking the accent of people from the students’ ethnic group or saying that lawyers from the student’s community are unintelligent or corrupt.
- Sexist conduct—from commenting inappropriately on the students’ appearance to comments on gender or even unexpected physical contact.
- Asking and expecting students to do personal errands for the principal (an oldie but still a goodie).
- Making the student move their desk adjacent to the principal’s desk so that the principal can watch the student at all times.
- Telling the student that they should be in the office from 8 in the morning until 10 at night plus weekends, regardless of whether there are pressing deliverable deadlines. Did I miss a new development in employment law that legalized slavery?
- Contradictory feedback like “you are spending too much time on these files” and “you need to slow down and do more careful work” and other variations on the “take your time but hurry” theme which clearly are not helpful.
- Yelling and swearing at the student.
- Threatening that the principal will not sign off on the student’s articling completion or that they will recommend that the student not be granted full credit. Remember Yoda saying “Do or Not Do. There is no try”? I want to say to these principals “Sign or do not sign. There is no threat or negotiation here.”
- Threatening students that if they leave, they will discover that it is a small legal community and that they will have a bad reputation.
- Telling students that they cannot talk to anyone about issues at the firm, including the Practice Advisors (any student or lawyer can call the Practice Advisors without advising their firms!)
- Telling students that they cannot talk to anyone about issues at the firm, including the Practice Advisors. Any lawyer or student can call the Practice Advisors without advising their firms or principals, and all conversations with Practice Advisors are confidential (both internally and externally) so there is no risk that firms or principals, or other departments at the Law Society, will learn about calls.
If the student feels safe speaking to the principal, a peer support volunteer can help them navigate a conversation in a constructive and appropriate manner. And if that conversation doesn’t go well, the volunteer can help the student assess whether the job remains viable. They can assist the student in connecting with professional counselling and other resources if necessary.
And if the student does not feel safe raising concerns with the principal, Assist’s two lawyers (Marc Adler and I) can help identify strategies or connect them with peer support volunteers who can provide personal or emotional support.
We invite students to Red Mug Coffee Circle, our supportive online group that meets on Mondays at noon so that they can connect with some of our senior peer support volunteers and other people who have been in challenging work situations. We want the students to know that they are not alone and that there is a community of legal professionals who will support them.
We may suggest other groups where the student will find peers—whether by practice area, personal demographics, or region. Isolation and loneliness are precursors to depression, so we help connect articling students with larger communities.
We urge students to call the Law Society’s Practice Advisors/Equity Ombudspersons (https://www.lawsociety.ab.ca/lawyers-and-students/practice-advisors/). The three Practice Advisors currently fill the Equity Ombudsperson role. I have worked with all three Practice Advisors, and they are compassionate, knowledgeable, and helpful. They can provide legal advice, something which Assist and its volunteers cannot do.
The Practice Advisors/Equity Ombudspersons also oversee the Articling Placement Program, which, unfortunately, has been paused due to difficulty in securing acceptable placements for students who were removed from untenable articling positions. The program has an excellent design: students who experience harassment and discrimination (using an objective test, unlike the Articling Student Survey which used a subjective interpretation), the student would be moved to a new firm and principal.
However, it seems that moving a student to a new firm is not easy and seamless. Firms had concerns about timing of student arrivals which may not have fit their timetable, and they wanted to screen students using a variety of criteria which students may or may not meet. I know of situations where a student was integrated successfully on short notice by a participating firm where the student thrived and was even hired back. But unfortunately, confidentiality surrounding placed students’ identities make it difficult to share these success stories.
Even though the Articling Placement Program does not accept new students for the time being, I will still be urging students to call the Practice Advisors. The Practice Advisors can offer other types of assistance and may be aware of programs or opportunities beyond Assist’s knowledge and scope. They can also advise students about the process of filing complaints about the principal’s conduct as this is a very nuanced area.
Pardon the digression: I spent many years performing workplace investigations and while in the early years of this practice, I encouraged people to always file complaints, I came to realize that sometimes the cost to the potential complainant was too high. It is important for individuals to learn about the complaint process, their role in it, and potential backlash on them so they are able to make a fully informed decision taking into account all of the potential risks and benefits . So: call the Practice Advisors!
If a student has been terminated by their firm, we connect them with others who have been in this situation and, when they are ready, we support them returning to their job search. It is very difficult to be a successful job applicant when you feel like you have been kicked in the head. You need to recover your equilibrium before returning to the fray.
I hope that lawyers who read this blog are concerned about what vulnerable students are experiencing at the hands of others in our profession. While some stories have two sides, abusive language and behavior are never acceptable and cannot be tolerated, nor can conduct which violates law (like failing to paying students at least the minimum wage) or our Code of Conduct.
If you, or someone you know, are experiencing questionable behavior on the part of a principal, please ask for help. The Practice Advisors are confidential, as is Assist. And if you are a concerned lawyer, please give us a call or send an email to let us know you would like to volunteer to help with our Articling Student Outreach. We can help turn the tide by shining a light on unacceptable articling conditions and sending the message that students deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
Loraine.