Know Your A B PLTCs

It's a remarkably sunny day here in Vancouver, which is not to say it's warm - there's this Mistral-like wind blowing about that's put the chill, maybe fittingly, on this last day of winter. And coming spring means summer is soon after and, for graduating law students - the real world.

A lot of people ask me if the lawyer transformation is complete upon graduation, or if we really lost our soul those three years ago. (We only draft Faust's contract, not sign it.) The answer is no, that before the bar call, there is a year of articling, the key portion of which is (at least in this province) a ten-week stint of tender loving PLTC.

This is the Professional Legal Training Course, for which I attended an info session last week. It appears that after a summer of glorious frictional unemployment and an Italian trip during which I'll celebrate finally being done school - there's more school.

PLTC involves taking comprehensive courses at a building downtown in eight areas of the law, four of which I had (either successfully or not) avoided up until now: Creditor's Remedies, Family, Real Estate and Estates (also just as real). We're also responsible for four assignments: Advocacy (my client has a bloody knife, how do I tell him I won't hide it for him) Writing (Dear client, stop waving that thing about, it's not making you look any more innocent) Interviewing and Drafting. The last week culminates in two three-hour exams and them blam, we are professionally, legally, trained.

So to sum: in five weeks, I'll be 16 weeks away from being 10 weeks away from only being 9 months away from being a lawyer.