A History of British Columbia Legal Education

This paper explores the history of legal education in twentieth century British Columbia. The period covers the transition from qualification by apprenticeship to the foundation of Canada's first post-WWII Faculty of Law - the beginning of modern legal education in Canada. Issues addressed include the moral vision of legal education, gender and the legal profession (the admission of women lawyers), race-based exclusions, the question of whether communists could be qualified as lawyers, and the evolution of legal curriculum from the age of moral reform to the era of narrowly technocratic notions of legal knowledge