The Lexpert® Law Student and Associate Recruitment Guide – in its fifth year – continues to undergo a process of change in step with the feedback we receive from the legal community. This year we are “publishing” online only. We continue to believe that we provide a valuable third-party vehicle for students, embarking on the next stage of their legal careers, to receive the opinions and experiential reviews from associates at law firms.  

    As for our survey process, here’s what we do:

    We surveyed more than 5,200 associates and junior partners from the leading 195 business-oriented law firms in Canada. We collected and reported the data.

    All Canadian law firms were eligible to participate in the survey. The survey was sent to associates and junior partners in first to ninth year of practice.

    The survey questions were carefully chosen to provide relevant information to law students and facilitate the decisions they must make. Participation by law firms was solicited in the winter of 2010, and the survey took place during the late spring. The survey process is anonymous; we require certain minimum response numbers from firms in order to publish results. Participants received an e-mail invitation and responded to the survey questions online.

    Survey questions asked for a response on a scale from 1 to 5 and the published results for each question, or group of questions, are shown as a weighted average of the responses. An average is then calculated for each category of questions and illustrated graphically. All compensation data is obtained directly from the firms. The quotations come directly from individual lawyers via their survey responses and are edited only for typographical errors.

   From the quotations received, we selected those ones that the editorial team deemed to be representative. Keep in mind that our underlying goal is to inform independent, third-party reviews. We were also very attentive to protecting anonymity. From firms whose response rates were so low that the overall results might compromise that anonymity, we selected only non-identifying quotes.