Elsa Ascencio says growing up near the multicultural Toronto community of Jane and Finch, where she still lives, was a main factor in her decision to go to law school.

“But the same community that inspired me to enter into law, I’m unable to help, and I found that to be the greatest irony,” she said.

That’s because she’s in debt — tens of thousands of dollars piled up from her years at law school. And like a growing number of law school graduates in Ontario, she finds herself feeling she can’t afford to take on the legal work she wants to do to serve her community.

Not if she wants to start making a dent in her debt.

Many young racialized lawyers feel muzzled by their debt, she said. “We want to do all of these things, and we look at our debt levels and think, ‘that’s not happening.’”

Ascencio, who graduated from the University of Ottawa law school, is working toward being called to the bar this year. She wants to focus her practice exclusively on labour rights, but will need to find a firm that pays enough to bring down her debt. This, in turn, could mean not being able to help clients who can’t afford the firm’s rates, or who can’t afford a lawyer at all.

Her comments echo feedback in the Law Students’ Society of Ontario’s “Just or Bust?” survey, published in January, which surveyed law school students on tuition, debt and financial aid. The society is made up of representatives from the student governing bodies at all seven of Ontario’s law schools.

Several students submitted that rising law school tuition in Ontario is causing an access to justice issue, as future lawyers who want to work in areas of law that tend to involve a large number of low-income and marginalized clients — for example, in criminal, family or immigration law — instead find themselves seeking out corporate or other higher-paying legal jobs to get out of debt.

“I chose to pursue law school because I wanted to pursue social justice work and advocate for vulnerable populations,” reads one student comment from the survey. “Now that I am halfway through the degree, I realize that this kind of work will be very difficult to pursue with the amount of debt I will graduate with. So I feel as though I have inadvertently closed the precise door that I intended to open by coming to law school.”

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Caryma Sa’d, who was called to the bar in 2016 and is running in the upcoming Law Society of Ontario board of directors election, said high tuition and crippling debt for new lawyers is ultimately bad for the public.

Sa’d, a sole practitioner who focuses on landlord and tenant, criminal and human rights law, said the amount of money it takes to become a lawyer has an impact both on affordability for the public and diversity within the profession.

“Some of the costs get passed on to the client, which isn’t fair,” she said, adding lower tuition should translate into lower legal fees, but “the price tag can’t go down if the overhead costs of getting your law degree are so high.”

“If you want to keep fees low, you have to take on volume, but as a sole practitioner, that can be a recipe for things falling through the cracks,” she said. “It’s not good for the public if lawyers have this looming over their head.”

She said diversity also takes a hit, and this can lead to clients not having access to lawyers from their own communities.

Someone from a relatively impoverished neighbourhood who sees the price tag may not go to law school, “and we will continue to have the same faces as judges, the same faces as prosecutors, the same faces as defence lawyers,” she said.

In Toronto, the University of Toronto law school charges about $36,700 for tuition each year, while Osgoode Hall law school at York University charges closer to $28,500. Both schools also offer financial aid in the form of bursaries, scholarships and other awards.

At Osgoode, for example, the school handed out almost $2.5 million in bursaries for the 2017-18 academic year, which included a total of $645,000 spread out among 193 first-year students, said a university spokesperson.

At U of T, about 51 per cent of law students were eligible for financial aid in 2017-18, according to a statement from Alexis Archbold, assistant dean of the juris doctor program. She said the school has one of the largest financial aid programs in Canada and is the only law school in the country that offers a post-graduation debt-relief program.

“Because of the world-class quality of our faculty, and because of financial aid, we continue to see an increase in applications, as well as in the credentials of our incoming classes, admitting great students from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds,” she said. “Deepening our financial aid program will continue to support this.”

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The Law Students’ Society survey, which received 697 responses from all Ontario law schools between mid-October to mid-November 2018, noted that more than two-thirds of participants expected to owe more than $50,000 to financial institutions upon graduation and almost two-thirds expected to owe more than $20,000 in government student loans.

The society’s president, Heather Donkers, acknowledged in an interview with the Star that the survey’s methodology has limitations, given its small sample size and that the majority of responses came from U of T and Osgoode — the two most expensive law schools in Ontario.

“We thought it was at least a starting point for us to be able to have a conversation about what’s going on with tuition, and debt in particular, and student financial aid,” she said, adding she hopes organizations like the Law Society of Ontario and Canadian Bar Association will join her in coming up with a more comprehensive report.

Malcolm Mercer, the elected head of the Law Society, which regulates the legal profession in Ontario, told the Star he’s met with members of the Law Students’ Society executive and called their concerns “important.”

He said a recommendation from the students’ society that makes sense to him is to work with them and the universities to ensure students are getting all the information about the one-time licensing fees that must be paid to the law society, currently about $4,700.

“The concern that was raised, and I think it was a sensible concern, is that people don’t know about these costs and aren’t planning for them,” he said. Mercer pointed out that the law society offers a monthly payment plan for the fees, as well as a repayable allowance program for those who can prove financial need.

Rising tuition levels at Ontario law schools and other potential barriers for would-be lawyers are becoming issues in the upcoming election in April for the Law Society’s board of directors — known as benchers. Some of the candidates, like Sa’d, have been working in the legal profession for less than 10 years and argue they are better placed to represent the views of new and young lawyers.

While the law society doesn’t actually control tuition rates — they are set by the universities themselves — bencher candidate Atrisha Lewis believes the legal regulator could still play a bigger role in making the profession more accessible.

“There’s the view, which is quite narrow, which is that the law society is a regulator and their only role is to ensure the competency of the profession and regulate lawyers,” said Lewis, an associate at McCarthy Tetrault who was called to the bar in 2013.

“I don’t have that view,” she said. “I think (the law society) has a role to play to ensure that our profession is accessible to all and that tuition isn’t a barrier.”

She said that the law society has the power to accredit a law school, and could demand to see statistics from law schools such as the average amount of financial aid awarded to students and more information on student demographics.

“So can it regulate tuition? Absolutely not, but can it say, ‘I have deep concerns and it’s making me question whether I want to accredit your school?’ I think it does,” she said.

Mercer said “it’s appropriate for the law society to express views,” but added: “I think it’s important that the law society understands that the authority that it’s been given is not to regulate universities and not to regulate university tuition.”

Sa’d said another thing to focus on is how the law society can better facilitate the process for a young lawyer trying to start a practice. She suggested this could include the law society checking in on new lawyers to ensure their practice is in accordance with the rules, rather than disciplining them later for mistakes.

“There are many of us who are in the position of having to break out on our own,” said Sa’d. “In my view, the public interest would be best served if these fledgling young lawyers had some kind of support and safety net behind them.”