Law Society of Ontario report calls for paralegal exam results to be made public in anonymized form

LSO spokesperson Jennifer Wing says the standing committee commissioned the study on paralegal education programs. It included focus groups with paralegals to “fully understand the state of the profession.”

Consultation with paralegals

There were three recurring themes the Committee heard during these consultations, she says:

• Many paralegals felt there could be more resources and information to help them understand the availability of, and how to access, practice areas other than the three most prominent paralegal practice areas (small claims court; Provincial Offences Act matters, and Landlord and Tenant Board matters).
   
• Many new paralegal graduates felt they would benefit from information and training that would prepare them to open sole proprietorships.
   
• Many paralegals felt that increasing practical experience and exposure to the workplace before entering the profession would be a benefit to paralegals and the profession.

 The benefit of making exam results public

The report resulting from the consultation process suggests a two-step approach to publicizing exam results. For 2024, each educational institution will be advised of the aggregated licensing exam success rates for its recent and current graduates. From 2025 onwards, each educational institution’s licensing exam pass-fail rate will be anonymized on the LSO’s website.

The committee cites other reasons for making the exam results public. They include:

• Assuring the public that new paralegals meet high standards to enter the profession.
   
• Giving the LSO a better position to leverage this information to influence educational institutions to improve their standards or to make accreditation decisions.
   
• Creating more interest in colleges improving their licensing pass rates if outcomes were publicly available, resulting in better preparation of students for these examinations.

The committee report says it considered some of the arguments against posting the examination results. Some colleges suggested it unfair for the success rates of their graduates to be publicized “due to the risk of people over-attributing those outcomes to the institution.”

For example, “a college that seeks to attract students whose first language is not English, or second-career students might argue that these factors play a greater role in lower examination success rates than an inadequate education program.”

Similarly, colleges have argued that the publication of examination success rates “could negatively impact paralegals who have been successfully licensed despite having graduated from college programs with lower examination success rates.” A better gauge “might be the law society’s ongoing operational activities associated with paralegal college accreditation, including auditing and monitoring the performances of these colleges.”

However, the committee report says that considering these arguments, the conclusion was that “the public posting of aggregated examination outcomes appears to be the most impactful option to increase transparency for potential paralegal students and improve quality in paralegal education.”

The report notes that Ontario has regulated paralegals for the past 15 years. “During this time, a robust framework for paralegal education, licensing and entry-level competence has been developed.”

However, a group of paralegals last year asked the Ontario government to take over the regulation of lawyers and paralegals in Ontario because the LSO is not meeting its statutory duties.

Recommendations for modifying paralegal education

However, the LSO commissioned the study to see if modifications were necessary.

Among the recommendations from the committee is one that paralegal students be required to complete a minimum of 970 program hours of education and training, including 630 instructional hours in compulsory legal courses (up from 590 hours), 240 hours of field placement (up from 120 hours); and 100 instructional hours in additional classes that relate to a paralegal’s permitted scope of practice or support becoming a well-rounded paralegal graduate (down from 120 hours).

The committee recommends, for example, that the minimum hours for four compulsory legal courses (Communications/Writing, Torts and Contracts, Legal Research/Writing and Advocacy) be increased by ten hours each.

“These four courses are foundational to paralegal education and competence. Regardless of the practice area that a paralegal ends up working in, they will likely regularly rely on what they have learned in each of these courses.”

The report acknowledges that “most paralegal colleges have already recognized that an adequate level of instruction in these compulsory legal courses cannot be attained during the minimum hours set out in the Accreditation Policy and are exceeding the minimum hours.”

However, for colleges that have not recognized this need, “increasing the minimum hours will ensure that all colleges are elevating the course standard to be closer to the recognized minimum standard.” It will also ensure consistency between different college programs.

 Class duration

While the overall hours for paralegal accreditation should increase, the report says that committee members also want a maximum of four hours for any class “to encourage better outcomes.

Most colleges have class durations of three hours or less, but some colleges provide classes that run longer. One college recently sought approval for a course schedule that would have included six-hour classes.

In classes longer than four hours, the report says that the LSO’s paralegal education team noticed that they often ended early, featured activities that would not qualify as instructional time (homework or reading time), and included “excessively long” breaks.

“Significantly longer classes do not provide an optimal learning environment, are associated with poor instructional techniques and a lack of student engagement and should be discouraged,” the report says. “Further, given the minimum course hour requirements, a student missing a single class could be missing up to 20 per cent of the entire course.”

Longer field placements

As for field placements, doubling the required hours for accreditation will “allow for some new competencies to be added” in areas such as advocacy, client relations, ethics, legal drafting and practice management.

The report notes that committee members feel that the increase in placement hours “will not require significant changes to the existing field placement program from an administrative perspective.” Some existing or potential field placement supervisors “may be more interested in a longer field placement where they can provide lengthier projects to students because of the increased duration.”

The Committee says that in reviewing the paralegal curriculum, licensing requirements and oversight, its work was “informed by three guiding principles.” These are:

• Promotion of access to justice and recognition of “the important role that paralegals play . . . through providing high-quality legal services for specific legal matters in areas that lawyers do not typically service.
   
• Competence at every step of a paralegal’s career, starting with a high level of entry-level competence that paralegals can build on throughout their careers.
   
• Cost-effective and achievable requirements that can be met by the regulator and colleges, which do not impose extra costs borne by paralegal students or paralegals.

The LSO’s Wing says implementation of the items in the report is already underway. “The objective is to address the three recurrent themes . . . and ensure newly licensed paralegals are well-prepared to confidently enter the workforce.”

She adds the LSO  “will develop workplans and timelines to implement the recommendations, which will include working with educational providers.”