Extra-Curricular Opportunities at Western Law
It has always been important to me that I make time to participate in extra-curricular activities while I’m in school. Extra-curriculars teach me new skills I wouldn’t learn in school, varies my experience, and differentiates me from other students. It was important to me that I be involved in some sort of extra-curricular activities while in law school.
Western Law has a wide variety of extra-curricular opportunities available, as I’m sure many of the other law schools do as well. In this article, I am going to provide a guide to some of the opportunities available at Western Law, and specifically discuss the opportunities that I was involved in this past year.
Western Law has five legal clinics that students may volunteer with, although there is an application and interview process for these positions and they are rather competitive and difficult to get. The five clinics are: community legal services, business law clinic, dispute resolution centre, sports solution clinic, and pro bono students. This past year, my application for community legal services and the dispute resolution centre were rejected, however, I was given a position with the pro bono clinic in their family law project (FLP).
Pro Bono Students Canada is an organization that funds several pro bono legal projects at law schools across Canada. At Western Law there were over 20 projects this past year, each of which were focused on a different need that existed in the community.
The FLP, which I participated in, was run out of the courthouse in downtown London. Each week I had a 3.5 hour shift at the courthouse with one other student volunteer, to support the family law duty counsel, by doing intake interviews with new clients. All clients that we saw were experiencing family law concerns, which mainly involved child and spousal support, or child custody concerns. Myself and my fellow volunteer were tasked with interviewing the client to obtain relevant information in order to draft the required documentation they would need to file with the court. This position gave me the experience of meeting and working alongside experienced lawyers, dealing with clients concerns, and drafting documentation, which is all valuable experience that I did not obtain in my academic studies this past year.
Another extra-curricular opportunity that is very common at Western Law is the availability of moot competitions. For those of you that may be unfamiliar with “mooting”, it’s basically a simulated trial with a hypothetical legal situation. Students sign up voluntarily, prepare their oral arguments on their own time and compete against other students in a mock trial in front of judges (who are often lawyers from the community, professors, fellow students, and sometimes experienced judges from the community).
At Western Law, all students are required to participate in one moot for course credit, and aside from that students may sign up on their own fruition to participate in competitive moots that are not for course credit. In this past year, Western Law offered several internal moots (which may have totalled between 10–15 moots, if memory serves me correctly). Moots are an incredible experience if you are interested in seeing what litigation and dispute resolution is like in a practical sense. However, if you are uninterested in litigation or dispute resolution, then you may not want to participate in many moots, as they can be rather time consuming.
Personally, I am very interested in litigation so I was drawn to the idea of mooting. I participated in three internal moot competitions, in addition to the oral advocacy assignment which was required for course credit. Western Law offers moots in several different areas of law to appeal to a broad interest. Some of the topics of the moots this past year included entertainment law, medical malpractice, legal ethics and professionalism, and labour law. Additionally, these moots take many forms, including negotiations, trial advocacy, appellant advocacy, and client counselling.
Western Law also has a wide variety of organizations for students to get involved in based on their own interests. Some of the main organizations that run events for the full student body at Western Law included the wellness committee, advocacy committee, distinguished speakers committee, and law ball committee, to name a few. There are also student associations that are specific to almost each area of law, including criminal law, animal rights, charter rights, international law, and labour and employment law. Finally, there are student associations for different religions, ethnicities, and affiliations, including the black law students association, Jewish law society, gender and the law association, and south asian law students association. The school also offers the opportunity to start up your own student association if there is not a preexisting one that meets your interests.
Last but certainly not least is intramurals! Western Law partially funds several intramural teams in a variety of sports, such that we can form a team of all law students to compete in Western University’s main campus intramurals league. I played on Western Law’s indoor futsal team in the winter semester this year and had a blast! It was a fun way to stay active while also meeting new people from the law school.
All in all, Western Law offers a broad range of options for extra-curricular activities, such that students with all types of interests should be able to find something that is of interest to them.
