The Career Development Office (CDO) at Queen’s Law is a fundamental part of ensuring students’ future success. As Julie Banting (Artsci’00, MIR’01) begins a new challenge as the school’s recently appointed Director of Career Development, she says she wants to create an even longer list of career and practical training opportunities for students. 

“We have a solid foundation with our career management plan, which provides a customized overview for students to know what they need to do to stay on track with their career planning,” she says. Banting was previously was a career counsellor at the CDO for four years. Prior to that, she worked in the same field at Queen’s Smith School of Business and at the University of Toronto, where she earned her MEd in counselling psychology in 2005. 

“Moving forward, I’m excited about the opportunity to enhance and expand Queen’s Law’s relationships with alumni and employers.”

So what will that look like?

“We reach out to our core corporate partners, we have touchpoints for them when they come down to Queen’s and we organize events like Careers Day,” she says. “We do connect casually as well.”

She sees this as a continuation of the work that she started as a counsellor. 

“When I first started, I had a target list of in-house employers that might be able to take summer students,” she says, listing examples such as Johnson & Johnson and Brookfield Energy.

“To me it seems like a natural connecting point.” 

She gauges the needs that these companies have for summer law students and pitches the advantages that Queen’s Law students bring to the table. Banting says the first step is securing summer opportunities, after which companies hopefully decide that they could more habitually take on articling students. 

“That will be something we will look to expand as well.” 

“We will be developing our strategic plan, ensuring it aligns with the law school and with Queen’s University more broadly.” But it is still in the early days, she says. 

One potential avenue that Banting sees is the strong group of alumni who remain involved with the law school and who link Queen’s with the firms and organizations they work for. “We have existing programs like ProNet (a network of alumni who have agreed to be contacted for the purpose of informational interviews) and a Shadow Program through which students spend the day with a lawyer practising in an area they are interested in learning more about.” 

In terms of programming on campus, Banting says there is a wide array of events and workshops that will give law students an edge when it comes to building a career after law school. She highlights the new Resume Labs, where upper-year teams review first-year students’ resumes and give feedback on how to improve them, a LinkedIn starter session, and the Osler BizBasics seminars run by Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP. 

The BizBasics seminar series is meant to help law students gain an overview of the hard and soft skills necessary for careers in law. Banting says Queen’s CDO has a flexibility and ability to test out ideas that allows these sorts of unique opportunities for students. 

That’s not all. Queen’s Law also offers students one-on-one counselling, as well as opportunities to explore career options with counsellors and alumni who make themselves available to students for this purpose.

“In the customized experience students have with the CDO,” says Banting, “Queen’s has a competitive advantage over other law schools.”

By Jeremy Mutton