Why the Blazing Trails Mentorship Program

Since 2004, Level has worked closely with law students across the country on advancing various human rights issues. Through this work, we have gathered 15 years of feedback. We found one of the common themes that stood out was the feeling of disempowerment among students seeking to pursue alternative legal careers. Specifically, students communicated that law school had the effect of obscuring their social justice career aspirations and pushing them towards more traditional streams of law that they were not passionate about.

In 2017, to help address this concern, Level launched Blazing Trails, a unique program designed to connect law students with “trailblazers” - lawyers who carved out their own path in the social justice sphere. Mentorship cohorts are provided with a toolkit to facilitate discussion and to work through sessions designed to provide law students with the support they need to navigate the early stages of their legal career.

The program focuses on the following 10 fields of law: human rights law, international law, Indigenous law, environmental law, immigration and refugee law, women’s rights advocacy, racial justice, access to justice, law adjacent or policy work, and public legal education. In the 2023-2024 school year, some organizations represented in our mentors include: CCLA, BCCLA, LEAF, Ecojustice, Barbra Schlifer, Innocence Canada, and more!