They can't wrap their cases in an hour (less commercials)?

The Canadian Bar Association has taken notice of the CF's Judge Advocate General in their June 2009 edition (pdf) of one of their professional publications.

Apparently, the life isn't exactly what we see David James Elliot and Catherine Bell improbably undertaking each week on our television sets. I'm shocked.

Although he spent time as an articling student in private practice at Smart & Biggar, he says joining JAG two and a half years ago was a better option for him.

“I enjoyed my experience when I was at Smart & Biggar. I found it very intellectually satisfying,” he says. “But at the end of the day, I had to ask myself, ‘Do I want to spend my career helping Nike sue Reebok, then Reebok sue Nike?’ I came to the answer, ‘No,’ that was not what I wanted to do. JAG ... offered a different type of career and a different type of opportunity.”

...

If you think billable-hour targets are stressful, consider the personal life of a JAG lawyer. “We truly are sort of an extended family, so when things aren’t going as well as you’d like, or there are injuries, it tends to take a toll,” says Siepka. “You don’t have to know the individual. It touches you every single time.”

...

“Show me another law firm where, as a lawyer, you can rotate through and do military justice, criminal law...helping the military police with their investigations, [and] giving them advice in that round,” Weaver points out. “It’s hard to get bored when every few years — to the extent that you choose and to the extent that JAG needs you — you literally change jobs to something completely different.”

“I joke around and say, ‘I’m a walking poster for the Canadian Forces,’” says Siepka. “But you know, I wake up in the morning and go, ‘I get to do what for a living?’ It really is that much fun.”

JAG has only 150 regular force and 60 reserve lawyers in its talent pool. With such a small organization, one of the big challenges they face is recruiting/retention balance and promotion. The bigger the numbers, the easier it is to adjust to variances in people targets. But with CF lawyers, if just a few more of them than expected take their retirement, it throws things into a bit of disarray.

Recruiting becomes an issue at that point. I know of an RMC grad who got his law degree after getting out of the CF, and looked at getting back into the JAG afterwards - just the sort of fellow they should be jumping to get. He was told they weren't recruiting. He settled into private practice and got a call six months later: we really need you!

Sorry, but it doesn't work that way, folks.

Having said that, I'm glad to see the legal profession shining a light on military lawyers. As a buddy of mine who's had to work closely with JAG advisors says with tongue planted firmly in cheek: "They may be *spit* lawyers, but they're OUR *spit* lawyers, by God!"