Court Clerkship Program

Barry Loutit (3L)

This year I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to participate in Law 599: the Courts Clerkship course. This year, the Faculty of Law offered ten spots in the course: eight in Provincial Court of Alberta and two in the Alberta Court of Appeal. Students were asked to apply for a spot in May with copies of their transcripts, curriculum vitae, and a letter of interest explaining why they would like to be a part of this experience. Selection to the positions was made on grades, life experience, and litigation-related experience. I ended up being placed with the Provincial Court.

Over the course of the year I will complete rotations through the Civil, Family & Youth, and Criminal divisions of the Provincial Court of Alberta. I attend court once a week and depending on the rotation I either decide myself what to view or I have an assigned courtroom and presiding judge. I’ve been exposed to a lot of areas of law and courtrooms that I definitely would not have seen either in the course of my normal schoolwork or as a volunteer at SLS (tangent: if you really like SLS, don’t apply for this course because you aren’t allowed to be a volunteer anymore if you are chosen for it). Family law definitely comes to mind as one area that I don’t anticipate practicing in but which has actually been quite interesting to see in action.

Observing court is interesting for a few reasons. First, it gives me the opportunity to see how other lawyers approach litigation. It’s definitely a good experience when you see an A-plus litigator in action, and when you see some that aren’t up to par, you can start to pick out what they’re doing wrong (and remind yourself to not duplicate their mistakes). Even some of the self-represented litigants were fantastic; I mistook one for a lawyer before I realized he was the plaintiff. Second, it has really shown me how I should lay out a case before the court and what common problems people seem to run into at trial (not filing expert reports in time comes to mind here).

The judges are absolutely fantastic in this course. They definitely aren’t as scary as they sometimes seem when you’re on the other side of the bench (is it just me that found them scary?). They are more than willing to meet with me before court (in fact, sometimes it’s actually scheduled that way), let me read exhibits, and try to explain what exactly they anticipate is going to happen in court that day. It’s very helpful when the actual triers of fact are giving you pointers, and probably not something I’ll see in practice.

I highly recommend this course for anyone interested in either litigation or the subject matter of any of the particular court division. It has given me an entirely different view of trials and court procedure that I won’t soon have a chance to replicate.