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<p>I don’t know about most countries, but this isn’t entirely true about Canada. Canadian law grads are required to article for 10 months prior to being called to the bar. It isn’t “years” and it isn’t always “low paid”. The large and OCI-type firms pay their articling students in the range of $90,000-100,000 for those ten months; clerkships (which can substitute in some provinces for the articling requirement) are in the $50,000-60,000 range; and smaller firms/clinics/NGOs would generally be a little lower than that.</p>
<p>The articling requirement is always under debate here because some students every year have some difficulty finding a placement. It’s a small percentage but it does happen and the provincial law societies have the requirement under review. The situation in Canada, as I’ve mentioned before, is very different than that in the U.S. It’s much more difficult here to get into law school and the filtering is done at the beginning rather than at the end as it is in the U.S. The costs are also drastically different.</p>