Is it rare for lawyers to find part-time work in Canada?
February 4, 2021 8:35 PM Subscribe
I am curious to know if it is possible for Canadian lawyers to work part-time in government positions, non-profit, legal aid, clerking, or in small law firms?
Is it difficult to secure a 25-35 hour week position? Or do most lawyers in Canada have to work at least 50 hours a week? Does it depend on one's niche or location? And I am curious to know because some people are encouraging me to pursue law school, but if working 50 hours a week is mandatory, it is definitely not worth the stress and little free time. I am also interested in a PhD in Political Science, but also focusing on law and international political economy research as well.
Is it difficult to secure a 25-35 hour week position? Or do most lawyers in Canada have to work at least 50 hours a week? Does it depend on one's niche or location? And I am curious to know because some people are encouraging me to pursue law school, but if working 50 hours a week is mandatory, it is definitely not worth the stress and little free time. I am also interested in a PhD in Political Science, but also focusing on law and international political economy research as well.
Quite a few of my colleagues work part-time (3 or 4 days a week of 7 hour days) in the prosecution service in BC. That said, there is a LOT of competition for positions.
posted by birdsquared at 11:38 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by birdsquared at 11:38 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
I would not go to law school -- which is both tremendously expensive and not, itself, a part time endeavor, hoping to work part time afterward. That said, 35 hours a week is about 2.5 hours shy of full time work in the federal government, so if what you're hoping to avoid is not full time but overtime, your options are certainly greater. I'm a lawyer who works in the federal government as a policy analyst rather than as a lawyer, and I work 37.5 hours per week and overtime is rare. My impression is that actual lawyers in Justice probably work a little more overtime than I do, but that's highly dependent on where they work in Justice. People who do trial work are much more likely to do overtime before and during trials than people who are embedded in departments doing policy reviews.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:50 AM on February 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 6:50 AM on February 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
Do not go to law school.
Repeat. Do not go to law school.
Everyone wants a sub-40 hour a week job. Even people with "37.5 hours a week" probably work more. There are no advertised part-time jobs in private practice, and very very few in other contexts. If you work "part time" you end up working 4-5 days a week worth anyway, but you get paid less.
Do not go to law school.
Signed, a Canadian lawyer. PM me if you want to chat.
posted by dazedandconfused at 7:32 AM on February 5, 2021 [2 favorites]
Repeat. Do not go to law school.
Everyone wants a sub-40 hour a week job. Even people with "37.5 hours a week" probably work more. There are no advertised part-time jobs in private practice, and very very few in other contexts. If you work "part time" you end up working 4-5 days a week worth anyway, but you get paid less.
Do not go to law school.
Signed, a Canadian lawyer. PM me if you want to chat.
posted by dazedandconfused at 7:32 AM on February 5, 2021 [2 favorites]
Yes, part time work in Canadian law is very rare. The only area where this is more common is contract legal researchers. Don't go to law school intending to work as a lawyer part time.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:41 AM on February 5, 2021
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:41 AM on February 5, 2021
It is possible for lawyers to work 'part-time' in government positions. All of my close colleagues with law degrees either work our standard 35-hour+lunch week, which is considered full-time, or work fewer hours than that as consultants or board members. Most of the full-time ones work a flexible schedule that allows them a day off every other week.
However:
1) The majority of them aren't working in a position where a law degree was necessary and are now paying off law school debt in a job they could have gotten with a BA and three years of applicable experience or straight out of a Master's. This cost has been felt not only in the debt and any interest, but in the years of earnings they weren't able to start putting away for retirement or a mortgage, or even getting rent-control-locked into a nicer apartment.
2) Actual legal counsel postings are rare due to low turnover and a certain amount of opportunities going to people already inside the organization. My sense is that a lot of the jobs are snapped up by more experienced lawyers looking to slow down after putting in the longer hours earlier in their careers. In my organization, the salary for legal counsel starts at about 90k gross, which is definitely more money than I make, but depending on how the numbers work out might not be worth taking on debt and delaying full-time work in an expensive city on the long shot of actually getting one of the few positions posted each year.
3) Almost every lawyer I know working <35 hours on a board either also has a practice of their own or is semi-retired. Because it's the public sector, part-time pay for lawyers is not extravagant and often functions under the assumption that this borders on volunteer work for them. The youngest lawyer I know making a full-time living on a board is someone who still had to rack up six or seven years of burnout at a regular firm for the experience and money before being able to get and afford taking the position.
To compare, my organization just hired someone with a PhD fresh out of school but with relevant academic experience at about 60k, and they could feasibly be up to 80k in five years with some non-overtime hustle and networking. And we've also hired someone with a Master's fresh out of school at that level with that same opportunity, and many, many people with BAs and a few years of relevant experience/evidenced interest and initiative in our business. Moreover, at least three from that latter category had their subsequent Master's or PhDs paid for by work.
In most cases, the time and cost and stress of law school won't be a worthwhile investment for government work, especially if you're not passionate about law. There isn't a shortage of lawyers, but there is a shortage of high-paying low-hours work for them. On the bright side, though, if you're interested in government policy work - especially on the economic side - and have the chops, a job with good pay, reasonable hours, and decent benefits is definitely achievable.
posted by northernish at 8:46 AM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
However:
1) The majority of them aren't working in a position where a law degree was necessary and are now paying off law school debt in a job they could have gotten with a BA and three years of applicable experience or straight out of a Master's. This cost has been felt not only in the debt and any interest, but in the years of earnings they weren't able to start putting away for retirement or a mortgage, or even getting rent-control-locked into a nicer apartment.
2) Actual legal counsel postings are rare due to low turnover and a certain amount of opportunities going to people already inside the organization. My sense is that a lot of the jobs are snapped up by more experienced lawyers looking to slow down after putting in the longer hours earlier in their careers. In my organization, the salary for legal counsel starts at about 90k gross, which is definitely more money than I make, but depending on how the numbers work out might not be worth taking on debt and delaying full-time work in an expensive city on the long shot of actually getting one of the few positions posted each year.
3) Almost every lawyer I know working <35 hours on a board either also has a practice of their own or is semi-retired. Because it's the public sector, part-time pay for lawyers is not extravagant and often functions under the assumption that this borders on volunteer work for them. The youngest lawyer I know making a full-time living on a board is someone who still had to rack up six or seven years of burnout at a regular firm for the experience and money before being able to get and afford taking the position.
To compare, my organization just hired someone with a PhD fresh out of school but with relevant academic experience at about 60k, and they could feasibly be up to 80k in five years with some non-overtime hustle and networking. And we've also hired someone with a Master's fresh out of school at that level with that same opportunity, and many, many people with BAs and a few years of relevant experience/evidenced interest and initiative in our business. Moreover, at least three from that latter category had their subsequent Master's or PhDs paid for by work.
In most cases, the time and cost and stress of law school won't be a worthwhile investment for government work, especially if you're not passionate about law. There isn't a shortage of lawyers, but there is a shortage of high-paying low-hours work for them. On the bright side, though, if you're interested in government policy work - especially on the economic side - and have the chops, a job with good pay, reasonable hours, and decent benefits is definitely achievable.
posted by northernish at 8:46 AM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
If you'd need to take out student loans to pay for law school, only working part time as a lawyer is probably going to make it challenging to pay off those loans. Unless you have the means to pay cash for law school, or you'd have some secondary means of financial support once you're practicing part time, this sounds like a recipe for struggling financially.
Also, the kinds of options for part time work available to someone fresh out of law school are going to be limited and are likely to be less desirable / more precarious kinds of work. To the degree that anyone is making decent money while working reduced hours in position that offers some level of job security, you're almost certainly going to be competing against people who have been practising for a while already and who are looking for better work life balance.
posted by persimmons at 9:06 AM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
Also, the kinds of options for part time work available to someone fresh out of law school are going to be limited and are likely to be less desirable / more precarious kinds of work. To the degree that anyone is making decent money while working reduced hours in position that offers some level of job security, you're almost certainly going to be competing against people who have been practising for a while already and who are looking for better work life balance.
posted by persimmons at 9:06 AM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
I want to add to what I said -- I don't think anyone should ever go to law school in Canada with the idea that they want to pursue one very specific avenue of practice unless they *already* have knowledge and experience in that particular area.
If you're an accountant who wants to go into tax law, then you have a very good chance of getting into tax law when you graduate from law school, assuming you do well in law school. If you're a community organizer who works on racial justice issues and you want to further advance your racial justice work by becoming a lawyer, you have a good chance of that happening. If you are a PhD in biochem with some time spent in a commercial lab and you want to do pharma patent work, you will almost certainly be able to. If you are a mid-level HR professional and want to do labour and employment law, you should be able to find something. I know people in all of those situations from time in law school. I also know people who had a lot of more general interests or who had specific plans for what they wanted to do but no concrete experience who aren't doing what they hoped.
If you are straight out of your Bachelors or even your Masters degree, and you don't have a ton of directly applicable work experience, then when you come out of law school, there's a solid to middling chance that you will end up doing whatever you can find an articling position in. That might be doing doc review on corporate files or litigation support for personal injury work or late night jail visits and bail applications at a criminal defense firm or a million other things that aren't what you thought you'd be doing when you went to law school, but you need to get Called to the Bar so you take it. There are sometimes opportunities to shift over into something closer to what you want later, but they can be hard to come by, because legal expertise in a particular area is huge sunk cost if you try to switch fields.
If you have a plan for what you want to do, and there's a way to do it without going to law school, do that first. After you have some experience, if you *know* from that experience that going to law school will help advance your career, you can do that then.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:09 AM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
If you're an accountant who wants to go into tax law, then you have a very good chance of getting into tax law when you graduate from law school, assuming you do well in law school. If you're a community organizer who works on racial justice issues and you want to further advance your racial justice work by becoming a lawyer, you have a good chance of that happening. If you are a PhD in biochem with some time spent in a commercial lab and you want to do pharma patent work, you will almost certainly be able to. If you are a mid-level HR professional and want to do labour and employment law, you should be able to find something. I know people in all of those situations from time in law school. I also know people who had a lot of more general interests or who had specific plans for what they wanted to do but no concrete experience who aren't doing what they hoped.
If you are straight out of your Bachelors or even your Masters degree, and you don't have a ton of directly applicable work experience, then when you come out of law school, there's a solid to middling chance that you will end up doing whatever you can find an articling position in. That might be doing doc review on corporate files or litigation support for personal injury work or late night jail visits and bail applications at a criminal defense firm or a million other things that aren't what you thought you'd be doing when you went to law school, but you need to get Called to the Bar so you take it. There are sometimes opportunities to shift over into something closer to what you want later, but they can be hard to come by, because legal expertise in a particular area is huge sunk cost if you try to switch fields.
If you have a plan for what you want to do, and there's a way to do it without going to law school, do that first. After you have some experience, if you *know* from that experience that going to law school will help advance your career, you can do that then.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:09 AM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
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In case you were not aware, there is a new law school out of Ryerson in Toronto that integrated articling into the curriculum so graduates do not have to article.
posted by saucysault at 8:45 PM on February 4, 2021 [2 favorites]