Western may join the growing number of law schools that have moved to a JD designation to replace the current LLB. Click here to see full sized version.

If faculty council approves the change at its March 31 meeting, the University of Western Ontario will take its place among the growing number of law schools in Canada and around the world that have moved to a JD (juris doctor) designation to replace the current LLB.

In the wake of a student “yes” vote in favour of changing Western’s degree designation, Dean Ian Holloway, according to Alex Dimson, Editor-in-Chief at Nexus, the student newspaper at Western, did “a very good job of managing students’ expectations about the process.” Holloway warned that the issue would not go before Faculty Council until alumni had had their say.

A Feb. 19 letter invited alumni comments. Holloway expected a mixed response. “To my surprise,” he reported, “the overwhelming majority of early responses have been in favour of a change to the JD. And that includes graduates who graduated in the ’60s and ’70s. There have been a few who have been quite vocal about the need to maintain our tradition, but the majority [has] been in support of the change.”

Alumni comments received by March 3 will be shared with faculty council in time for its March 31 meeting. “It was very important to us,” said Holloway, “that the process of consultation with alumni, on this issue, be genuine. We don’t want to present them with a fait accompli.”

Holloway, who admitted that until recently, he had personally been in favour of retaining the LLB, “decided to bring the question before faculty council in response to demand for change by students.” Dimson explained that while the designation change “has not inflamed the passions of Western students,” the results of the student referendum were quite decisive, with 252 of 322 votes for change. A 2006 referendum produced inconclusive results.

Holloway noted that “some students believe that there is an emerging trend among leading law schools in Canada, and also elsewhere in the commonwealth, to make this change.”

The University of Toronto began awarding a JD in 2001, and the University of British Columbia recently followed suit. The law faculties at Queen’s and Osgoode Hall will debate the change this spring.

It is already possible for University of Ottawa, University of Windsor, and Osgoode law students to obtain a JD — if they participate in the joint LLB/JD programs offered by those schools.

The joint programs require study at both the Canadian law schools and their U.S. partner schools. After completing the four-year joint Osgoode/NYU program, for example, graduates obtain both an LLB and a JD.

A key advantage of the joint Osgoode/NYU program, explained Osgoode Dean Patrick Monahan, is that the JD awarded to those graduates is a U.S. JD. “A change in the designation of a Canadian law degree from LLB to JD doesn’t qualify the graduate as having an ABA-approved law degree.”
Without an ABA-approved JD, graduates interested in practising in the US face limits on the states in which they can write the bar exam. “Currently [students with non-ABA approved JD degrees] are eligible to write the New York exam, but they’re not eligible to write the bar exams of other U.S. states,” said Monahan.

“I think that having the two degrees gives these students credentials of tremendous value, both in the United States and in Canada, or indeed, internationally,” Monahan explained. “Increasingly, the practice of law is a global, cross-border undertaking, so I think that it gives them a global or transnational perspective on law.”

Both Monahan and Holloway acknowledged, however, that a JD designation – whether obtained through a joint program or simply awarded at the end of a Canadian course of studies – is unlikely to have much influence on U.S. hiring of Canadian graduates. While Dimson reported that some students hope a JD designation will give them “a leg up” in international labour markets, Holloway cautioned that “schools that do hire Canadians – which are mostly in New York City, and to a lesser extent in Boston or Los Angeles – don’t just hire Canadians. They hire graduates from Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, India. These are global firms. Regardless of the degree designation, they know what they’re getting.”

If improved job prospects aren’t behind students’ enthusiasm for the JD designation, then what is? Holloway advised that some students cite “parity with other professions — medicine and dentistry and so on.”

Years ago, Canadian medical schools switched from the British MB – still awarded in other parts of the Commonwealth – to the current MD. More recently, Australia’s Melbourne and Monash Universities converted their law programs from direct-entry (where students study law immediately after high school) to second-entry programs, a change recognized with a JD designation to replace the former LLB.

Dimson reported that Western students consider the JD designation to be “more reflective of the reality that most of us already have an undergraduate degree.” Western law students are ineligible for certain perks – like parking privileges – reserved for graduate students. “At Western, law students are treated as undergraduate students. That’s one of the reasons I’d be in favour of a switch to the JD.”

Adoption of the JD is being considered in other Canadian schools. Monahan advised that “a plebiscite has been scheduled for early March to permit Osgoode students to share their views” on the possibility of a change to the JD designation. Holloway said he’d “be very surprised if other schools – Alberta, for example – don’t begin a similar discussion.” Deans Percy and Saunders at the University of Alberta and Dalhousie respectively declined to comment on the trend, while Dean Petter at the University of Victoria described the debate as “largely a non-issue”.

But Holloway explained that the timing now seems particularly ripe for change. “The fact that Melbourne made the change – Melbourne, I think, is one of the best law schools in the common law world – gave me cause to rethink my own position.

“One of the things we’ve been working to do at Western, in recent years, is to internationalize ourselves. If a degree title will send a signal to the world that we’re part of a global community involved in legal education, then that’s a signal I wouldn’t mind sending.”