To boost the ranks of Black lawyers in Canada, law schools should introduce a separate admissions program for Black students and create Black-focused scholarships and bursaries, according to a new report.
Because law schools serve as the gatekeepers to the legal profession, they have a special responsibility to reduce structural barriers for Black students on their way to becoming the country’s future lawyers, judges and general counsels, wrote the authors of the Black Law Student Census Report.
The report, published this week by the Black Law Students’ Association of Canada, compiles profiles of 23 law schools and the percentage of Black students admitted in their programs in 2022 compared with the percentage of Black residents in the city and province the law school is located in from the 2021 census.
In total, 15 of the 23 schools (the country has 23 law schools offering 24 programs) reported a Black student population that was proportionally lower than the city the law school was in – examples include the University of Toronto (4.24 per cent of students in the program, compared with the 9.48 per cent in the city), the University of Alberta (0.73 per cent in the program, compared with 5.76 per cent in the city) and Laval University (1.05 per cent in the program, compared with 8.76 per cent in the city).
A total of 12,895 students were enrolled in Canadian law school in 2022. Of those, 511, or 3.9 per cent, identify as Black. Black Canadians make up 4.3 per cent of the population, according to the 2021 census.
Mirabelle Harris-Eze, national president of the Black Law Students’ Association of Canada and one of the report’s authors, said that the schools that admit a percentage of Black law students that exceed the regional average Black population – Dalhousie University, Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson) and the University of Calgary, among others – still have much work to do.
“They need to make it their mandate to think about how they’ve under-corrected for so long, they’ve essentially had white quotas,” she said.
Another reason to increase the ranks of Black people in the legal profession is because Black people have been historically overrepresented in the justice system, both as victims and those accused or convicted of crimes, Ms. Harris-Eze points out. A federal study from 2016 found Black people were more likely to receive longer sentences and less likely to receive fines or conditional sentences compared to the rest of the population.
Those stats create “an immense need for more culturally competent lawyers,” said Ms. Harris-Eze. That means lawyers who can argue critical race theory, advocate for race-based sentencing, and build a client’s case around their understanding of the lived experiences of Black people, she said.
One of the report’s suggestions in remedying the problem of underrepresentation of Black law students is introducing an application process for Black students that looks beyond GPAs and LSAT scores.
At the University of Toronto’s law school, the Black Student Application Program was introduced in 2021 so that when evaluating candidates, the admissions team – which includes Black lawyers, faculty and senior students – could see “the fuller context of their academic and non-academic achievements, perspectives and lived experiences,” according to a written statement from Ada Maxwell-Alleyne, the assistant dean of equity, diversity and inclusion at the University of Toronto’s law faculty.
A similar program was introduced at the University of Calgary’s law school in 2021.
The report’s authors also called for more scholarships and bursaries for Black students, citing the racial wealth gap. Statistics Canada figures show that the low-income rate for Black children is 2.5 to 3 times higher than non-Black children.
Steeves Bujold, president of the Canadian Bar Association, described the problem of underrepresentation as “unacceptable.”
Measuring the problem is an important first step, he said, and he expressed support for the authors’ recommendations.
“If you want to turn the tide, and you have a community that is less-favoured economically, you need to put in some incentives and programs to alleviate the barriers at entry,” he said.
Dakshana Bascaramurty