“It is time for the legal profession and the judiciary to cease to be, from a foundational education point of view, principally a satellite of the law schools in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,” the proposal said, citing support letters it received from the community. “The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador desperately needs more lawyers. You only have to look to rural Newfoundland and Labrador to see the appalling absence of lawyers.”

Memorial University’s proposal, in the works since 2013, would be Canada’s 24th law school, following the approval of new law schools at Lakehead University and Thompson Rivers University, according to statistics from the Council of Canadian Law Deans. Memorial University has already explored the idea of a law school on at least two occasions in the past, the proposal said.

“It has been a long time gestating, but we took pauses along the way,” says Noreen Golfman, provost and vice president (academic) of Memorial University. “So it’s not like it has been a continuous struggle or anything. It’s been in bursts of enthusiasm. When I came into this job, I certainly vowed it would see the light of day.”

But Memorial University’s senate approved its law school in the same month that Ryerson University saw its law school rejected by the Ontario provincial government, which cited funding concerns.

Golfman says Memorial and Ryerson are in very different contexts.