Portage la Prairie Articling Students: 2025-2026

Important Date: Deadline to Apply is 12:00 p.m. CT (noon) on Tuesday, May 14, 2024

We are looking to hire up to two Articling Students to work out of our Portage la Prairie office.

With 50 years of service in and around Portage la Prairie, MacGregor, Gladstone, and now Neepawa, Christianson TDS Law is a vibrant and dynamic law firm that has built a solid reputation for our commitment to quality and client service. Whether you are buying or selling a house or farmland, starting a business, drawing a Will, creating a succession plan, or dealing with an Estate, our team will ensure that your interests are fully protected in these complex and challenging times. We provide high-quality legal services across several areas of law, including litigation, corporate, real estate, and family law.

Supplemented by our Winnipeg office, our clients have direct access to over 30 areas of the law including taxation, environmental law, business immigration, labour and employment law, complex litigation, intellectual property, aboriginal law, and securities law, as well as connections to reputable (Lex Mundi) law firms in over 100 countries around the world. Our lawyers have access to a wide range of practice development and practice management tools. A full-service marketing department provides internal practice and business development support, and the department works with the Practice Groups to provide frequent continuing professional development opportunities.

We believe that collaboration is essential to providing outstanding professional service. Working together with a shared vision, we are devoted to serving our valued clients. Our collegial workplace fosters greater teamwork, responsiveness, and communication, which enables us to provide our clients with high-quality services.

Areas of Practice

We serve a variety of clients in a wide range of service areas including:

• Corporate/commercial
• Residential and commercial estate transactions
• Property development
• Municipal law
• Succession planning
• Collections
• Family law
• Estates
• Estate litigation
• Wills
• Power of attorney
• Civil litigation
• Criminal defence

Our Objective

Our objective in hiring students is to identify individuals who will join the firm, initially as Associates, and ultimately become our Partners. We hire students with the intention of developing them into excellent lawyers. The offers extended to students to stay on with the firm as Associates have historically reflected the firm’s objective to retain students who will carry on the firm’s tradition of excellence. Once kept on, our marketing group helps Associates to build their practice over time, by offering a wide range of marketing and professional development support.

The Articling Year

We provide our students with extensive practical experience and regular exposure to clients and to other lawyers with the goal of developing strong legal and communication skills. Students are given the opportunity to work with lawyers in many different practice areas while, at the same time, the firm has the opportunity to assist the student in developing the foundational skills that are necessary to becoming a competent legal practitioner. During the articling year, each student is assigned to a small group of lawyers who act as “principals.” Emphasis is placed on providing each student with principals who practice in the area(s) of law the student is most interested in along with a principal or two in different fields so as to allow for a diverse and varied learning experience. We believe that this is superior to a “rotation” system as it allows Articling Students the opportunity to maintain continuity with files and their mentors, while also fostering a collegial atmosphere among students.

Mentorship is a key value during the articling year and beyond. We give students an appropriate level of responsibility and ensure that they have the necessary assistance and support to be able to properly complete the work that they have been assigned. Regular meetings are held among our students and the firm’s Students Committee to provide feedback with respect to performance, in addition to the ongoing feedback received directly from principals. Our practice of open-door access to lawyers is just one feature of the firm’s collegial approach to the practice of law.

We pay our Articling Students a salary which is competitive with other law firms. The fees for PREP (the bar admissions course) are paid by the firm along with any Law Society practising fees and Call to the Bar fees for those students who are retained as Associates. Our Articling students are eligible to participate in the firm’s group insurance benefits package, which includes health, dental, and disability insurance coverage.

Professional Development Training

Along with frequent in-house seminars, CTDS supports the attendance of students at outside CLE programs, including webinars and pays for their attendance at such programs.

Commitment to Diversity

One of our firm’s Core Values is that we value diversity and strive to reflect the communities we serve. In that regard, we encourage students who identify as an Indigenous person, a visible minority, a person with a disability, and/or a member of the 2SLGBTQ+ community to apply. We also welcome students to self-identify their membership in these groups if they wish to do so.