Student Programs

Our Summer Program

Each year, we hire approximately six summer students who work with us in our Ottawa office from mid-May to the end of August. As a summer student, you will rotate through our three general areas of practice: business (including regulatory), employment and labour and litigation. You will also be assigned a mentor to help you navigate the firm. As we don’t have a formal work allocation system, you can organize your own files and manage your own time to start developing practice-management skills, with appropriate oversight.

You’ll be involved in a variety of tasks, such as assisting lawyers with trials or arbitrations, helping corporate lawyers with due diligence on transactions, attending Small Claims Court or arguing motions as well as researching and writing memos on various areas of the law.

We believe in giving you hands-on responsibilities so you have the opportunity to learn and grow through doing.

Additionally, you’ll participate in our continuing legal education program, which is delivered via a hybrid approach. Because we’re highly integrated nationally, some of these sessions will be in-person and some will be delivered by videoconference, depending on the lawyers involved and where they are located. We also coordinate for national sessions for all our summer students in all of our 6 offices. All these touchpoints present opportunities to interact with our other offices and get to know us better, nationally. These programs focus on legal skills such as research, drafting and advocacy, and on business skills such as client development and media training.

While working and learning are enjoyable, we also offer some real fun by hosting both formal and informal social events that will help you to get to know other students and members of the firm. Our Ottawa office is truly special because it is tightly knit and the whole team sits on one floor, which means that you will have the opportunity to make long-lasting and meaningful connections.

Our Articling Program

Our articling student rotations are the same as summer student rotations. You’ll therefore spend time in the business (including regulatory), employment and labour, and litigation groups.

You will receive formal evaluations at various points throughout the articling term designed to assist you in continuing to develop your skills. In addition, we have regular check-ins with our students (in addition to the formal review process) to address any questions and/or ensure they are involved in meaningful and substantive work. Our lawyers also make a habit of providing real-time feedback, because we believe that student development is important and we want our students to learn as much as possible during their time with us. In addition, you’ll receive ongoing training to help develop your legal skills to further supplement the hands-on experience.

While we don’t have guaranteed hire-back, we seek to grow our firm from within. Our tight-knit Ottawa office means that you’ll work and socialize with team members throughout your time with us, and our team will be committed to your development and integration. We also host a number of events during the articling term, which foster our culture of teamwork and mutual respect.