UCalgary Law’s first dean: The vision that built the faculty

When John McLaren became the founding dean of the University of Calgary Faculty of Law and served in that role from 1975 to 1984, he wasn't simply stepping into a leadership role; he was helping create an institution from the ground up.

Rather than viewing the task as daunting, McLaren embraced it as a way to rethink what a modern law school could become: one that was starting from scratch with some freedom to experiment; to blend novel approaches with what was valuable in existing patterns of legal education; to devise a blueprint that embodied these elements, and to emphasize the responsibilities of the lawyer as a member of a trustworthy profession committed to the welfare of the general public.

“To have the opportunity to start a new school from scratch was really a challenge, but it was one that was a pleasing challenge in many ways,” he said.

The 1960s and ’70s were a period of significant change for Canadian legal education. It was a time when clinical law was beginning to gain traction as a way of understanding law, its processes, and how to practice it. 

It was also a period during which legal processes more generally were being investigated. Questions and answers increasingly centred on how ideas and policies get translated into law and administered in various ways, how law and legal practice operate both institutionally and at a relational and personal level, and how the law’s impacts and effects are considered and tested. At the same time, cross-disciplinary teaching in areas such as law and history and law and the social sciences were also beginning to excite interest within the academy.

For McLaren, these changes taking place across the country offered a rare opportunity to build a law school that incorporated these ideas into legal education and blended them into curricula.

“It was an important time in Canadian legal education because Canadian law schools had been moving in the late ‘60s into the ‘70s into a search for more meaning in legal education so that it went beyond students only learning by sitting in classrooms and digesting cases and statutes,” he said.

With the founding of UCalgary Law, the challenge, according to McLaren, was to determine how a new, small law school could incorporate these ideas into its curriculum while preserving what was valuable and important about the traditional approach to legal education.

Building more than a law school

Looking back, McLaren credits the collective support from the faculty and legal profession as an important step in theschool's early success. Rather than facing the challenges of founding a new faculty alone, he found himself working in an environment where the community was invested in the school's future and in making it a success.

"There was a good deal of interest and support for the law school in Calgary within the legal profession, the academy, and the community at large, and that really made for a very helpful environment in which to operate,” he said.

One of the law school’s founding values during McLaren's tenure was community. According to McLaren, building something new required more than classrooms and curriculum; it required collaboration, connection, and a shared sense of purpose, especially in the early years of the law school.

McLaren emphasized the importance of building a collaborative law school environment in which students and faculty worked together to achieve educational and social goals. 

"Being a lawyer should be a social responsibility as well as an individual responsibility," he said. “You're in the law because you want to serve people and their interests fairly and effectively, alert to the social context that exists around you.”

Guided by values of trust, respect, and collaboration, McLaren helped build a law school where students developed legal knowledge and a lasting commitment to serving their communities.

According to McLaren, this, in part, was assisted by a commitment from students and faculty to creative ways of enjoying each other’s company, whether it be through the school’s crokinole league or the annual Law Show. The former dean also speaks with gratitude and respect about the amazing administrative staff who served the school so well and with such good humour during those early years.

Beyond UCalgary Law: Next steps

After nine years, McLaren’s tenure as dean had come to an end. Looking to continue his work in academia, he spent the next three years at UCalgary Law teaching and researching.

“I wanted to go back, not only to the books, but to a research agenda, and explore, in my case, the relationship between law and history and to digging into archives,” he said.

Over the years, McLaren devoted much of his research to a number of topics, including comparative colonial law, social justice, and the law’s treatment of cultural diversity, examining these topics through the lens of legal history.

Following his twelve-year stint at UCalgary, McLaren received an invitation to join the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria in 1987, as Lansdowne Professor of Law, where he remained for the next nineteen years and made Victoria his home. What began as a career opportunity soon became a place where he envisaged staying for the long term.

“When you settle in Victoria and get used to it and enjoy it, it’s hard to contemplate moving anywhere else,” he said.

The vision that McLaren helped establish at UCalgary Law continued long after his departure. The principles that guided the law school's earliest years remain central to its identity today.

Looking back, McLaren's greatest achievement was not simply to help build a law school from scratch but to create a culture where legal education extended beyond the classroom, preparing students to become skilled lawyers and thoughtful professionals dedicated to working for and strengthening their communities.