Our summer program
As a summer student, you will be assigned a principal, a partner of the Firm who will be responsible for ensuring that you are exposed to as many aspects of the practice of law as possible. You will also be assigned two mentors, a member of our Student Committee who will act as your sounding board and help ensure that your summer experience is a great one, and an Associate Mentor to act as an additional support.
Your work
We do not assign our summer students to any particular department or area of practice. This provides you with flexibility to explore and pursue your own areas of interest. It also enables you to maximize your opportunities to follow certain transactions or court proceedings for the entire summer and to participate in solving issues as they arise.
We also check in with you on a regular basis to discuss your thoughts on the types of work you have been doing and the types of assignments you would like to take on going forward. To the extent that you would like to explore work in new areas or obtain more work in a particular area of interest, we can help make that happen.
We believe that, as someone hoping to gain a wealth of knowledge, you should be given as much responsibility as your expertise, experience and comfort level will allow. As a result, we aim to give you as much contact as possible with clients, lawyers from other firms and government representatives, as well as with courts, administrative bodies and tribunals.
Evaluation and feedback
Students, colleagues and clients appreciate that our doors are always open. We depend on this for success—to achieve the best results for our clients, to create a positive working environment and to constantly improve our performance.
These discussions are supplemented by a formal review process for summer students to provide you with constructive feedback on your professional development.
Training and development
Our summer program begins with an orientation designed to introduce you to our Firm. Following that, regular lunch seminars throughout the summer will provide continuing legal education on a number of substantive legal issues and practice-related matters. These include practice issues of particular interest to students and new lawyers, such as legal ethics, drafting skills, writing skills and client relations skills. Lawyers, students and, occasionally, clients, law school professors or judges lead the presentations and discussions.
You are integral to the future of our Firm, so we will work hard to help you meet your personal goals. The friendly, non-competitive environment among students, staff and lawyers is critical to your achievements and to the growth of our business.
Social events
We pride ourselves on our non-hierarchical workplace, where our lawyers, students and staff all work together with the goal of serving our clients’ needs. When it comes to social events, we like to involve the whole team, so virtually all of our social events include all Firm personnel. We commonly invite spouses and significant others to join the fun too.
You will have the opportunity to participate in many social events and functions that we hold each year. These include Firm lunches, softball games, summer social events, the annual Firm holiday party and many more.
Summer positions available
While our needs can fluctuate from one year to the next, we anticipate future openings for between four and seven 2L summer law students annually.
Compensation and benefits
Summer fellowships
In addition to our summer law student positions for students who have finished their second year of law school, we also offer the following summer fellowships, which involve splitting the summer between working at our Firm and assisting a law professor with a research project.
- Our Douglas Knowles, QC, Annual Internship in Insolvency Law is open to first year law students attending the University of British Columbia.
- Our UVic and TRU John G.R. Third Annual Summer Fellowship in Real Estate Law position is open to first-year law students attending the University of Victoria and Thompson Rivers University in alternating years UVic in 2023, TRU in 2024 and so on).
Further details about the programs, including the details of the application process, are available through the university career services offices.
Our hireback policy
We’re looking for summer students who will become a long-term part of our team. That’s why we recruit summer students who have the potential to become articling students and thereafter associates. We’re proud that our office has a very strong hireback ratio.
We were pleased to offer articling positions to all of our 2024 second-year summer students.