Get Involved:
Justice Sector Collaborators

LAWS owes much of its success and ability to offer such wide range of opportunities to our students to its strong relationship with the justice community. Enabling LAWS students to enjoy positive interactions and dialogue with legal professionals is a key part of the program and provides opportunities for positive role modelling and personal, professional and academic mentorship and guidance.

Volunteer With Us

— How It Works

Lawyers, judges and representatives of the legal profession and justice sector community participate in our programming and provide essential support in many different ways, including:

  • Being guest classroom speakers
  • Joining our justice sector career carousels
  • Coaching and/or judging mock trials
  • Meeting with LAWS students during courthouse trips
  • Having a student job shadow them through the Court Experience Program
  • Developing materials and resources
  • Speaking at LAWS conferences such as our Grade 10 Rights and Responsibilities Conference, Grade 11 Forensic Pathology Conference, Grade 12 Post-Secondary Conference and our Newcomer Conference
  • Participating in the Youth Summer Program
  • Providing mentorship through the Law Firm Mentoring Program
  • Hiring a student through the LAWS Summer Job Program.

Legal professionals also support our programming through financial donations to our post-secondary bursaries and to our overall programming budget.

“LAWS facilitates summer employment opportunities to high achieving students who would not otherwise have access to such opportunities. LAWS is about meaningful and impactful inclusion where employers enjoy the benefits of exceptional talent. Deloitte has participated in the LAWS summer placement program for years and we highly recommend participation by other employers. Everyone wins.”

Ken Fredeen, General Counsel, Deloitte

— Summer Jobs Program

LAWS pioneered Canada’s first law-focused youth Summer Job Program (SJP), which has quadrupled since its inception in 2007. The SJP is a particularly transformative LAWS experience, which places students in paid employment across Toronto’s legal sector. Participating students work for a minimum of four weeks in the summer in law firms, legal aid clinics, courthouses, in-house counsel departments, government ministries, public interest organizations and legal educational institutions.

2023 Summer Job Program Employers

— Law Firm Mentoring Program

LAWS Law Firm Mentoring Programs are based on the concept that mentoring can have a transformative impact on young people by imparting critical skills, expanding social connections, providing positive guidance and support, and exposing students to a professional work environment. We currently deliver five Law Firm Mentoring Programs pairing over one hundred high school students with lawyers from leading Toronto law firms. We also offer a Law Firm Mentoring Program for our alumni who are senior undergraduate students and are interested in applying for law school.  Participating lawyers are assigned as mentors to individual students for monthly mentoring sessions.

— Court Experience Program

Through the Court Experience Program we partner with the Justice of the Peace Bench of the Ontario Court of Justice to enable LAWS high school students to closely observe the duties and functions of legal professionals in a criminal justice setting. Students spend the day visiting the holding cells, dialoguing with justice sector professionals and job-shadowing judges, justices of the peace, duty counsel and crown attorneys in five Ontario Court of Justice courthouses.

— Get In Touch

To discuss how you or your firm can partner with LAWS, please contact Stephanie Nilausen at snilausen@lawinaction.ca