For the fourth year in a row women have made up the majority of new Ontario lawyers called to the bar.
The percentage of women lawyers has been steadily increasing over the years and constituted 54 per cent of new lawyers in Ontario this year. Lisa Reilly of the Law Society of Upper Canada commented that: “this has been a trend over the past few years.” The statistics show that the society is achieving the diversity that it strives for: “Our focus is to make the legal profession continuously more representative and encouraging students to choose law as a career,” said Reilly.
Statistics for other areas of equity are variable because they are based on voluntary self-identification, but seem to show that there is a steady level of francophone, aboriginal and visible minority lawyers graduating over the past couple of years.
Another area of change within the profession is the average age of those being called to the bar. The average age is now 31, whereas it used to be in the mid-twenties. In the last ceremony in Ottawa 34 of the 148 students were over the age of 40.
Toronto is one of three Ontario cities which holds call to the bar ceremonies and a total of 691 new lawyers were called at the ceremony held at Roy Thompson Hall.
The increase in graduating women lawyers does not come as a surprise to Reilly because women now outnumber men at the undergraduate level in university anyway. There are no special quotas for women to go to law school so the high number of women in the bar admission course can be explained by the increase at the undergraduate level. The percentage of female lawyers has been steadily increasing for several years now. Fifty-four per cent of those called to the bar this year were women, compared to 52 per cent in 2001 and 47 per cent in 1999.
