The Next Generation of Lawyers: Rebuilding Trust in Quebec’s Justice System

As Quebecers’ trust in their institutions erodes, an entire generation of legal professionals is arriving with a different idea of the job: transparency over secrecy, the citizen over the monopoly. What if the future of Quebec justice already rests on their shoulders?

There are two ways to read the current state of justice in Quebec. You can stop at the numbers, and they are harsh. Or you can look at who is arriving. And there, for the first time in a long while, there is a real reason for optimism — provided you know where to look.

This article is about that reason. It is about the law students, the articling clerks, the lawyers who have just been sworn in. About those who enter the profession not to inherit it, but to repair it. A generation that, from their first days at university, refuses to see access to justice as a privilege and holds to it as a right — and that chooses to listen to the citizen rather than speak in their place, convinced that contact with people and transparency, not secrecy, are the real solution. And it asks a question no one in the upper ranks seems willing to put into words: what if the solution were not at the top of the mountain, but at the bottom, among those who are just beginning?

I — The backdrop

A crisis of confidence the numbers can no longer deny

Let’s start with the backdrop, because it has to be named plainly. According to a Léger survey conducted for the Quebec Bar and made public in June 2026, 43% of Quebecers feel their trust in public institutions has declined in recent years. Barely 4% believe it has improved. This is not a shift in mood: it is a chasm.

The courts are among the institutions touched by this erosion. In other words, the bond of trust between citizens and the system meant to protect them is damaged — and those who run that system now know it, data in hand. The question is no longer whether there is a problem. It is who will solve it, and how.

II — The next generation

A generation that isn’t waiting for permission

While we debate the causes of this crisis, part of the profession has already chosen its answer: to go toward the citizen. Not in theory — in practice, on Saturday mornings, for free.

Consider the Telephone Legal Clinic of the Young Bar of Montreal, now in its 46^th edition. Volunteer lawyers and notaries answer the public’s legal questions free of charge over two days — family law, housing, immigration, taxation, the environment. In a single recent edition, nearly 3,500 people were helped. Forty-six times in a row, a generation of legal professionals got up on a Saturday to pick up the phone, without billing a single minute.

This is not an isolated gesture. When the Young Bar of Quebec, the Young Bar of Montreal and the regional Young Bar Association take up the pen together to demand concrete access-to-justice measures, they do not apologize, they do not beat around the bush: they present themselves as Quebec’s next generation and demand access to justice for all. The tone has changed. Where an entire generation had learned to manage the scarcity of justice as a fact of life, the one arriving treats it as a scandal to be fixed.

And this conviction, we do not read it only in press releases. Here is what we receive directly on our platform, from professionals who are stepping up as the next generation — members in good standing of the Bar as well as other legal professionals, whose words speak for themselves:

III — The shift

The citizen over the monopoly on information

There was a time, not so long ago, when legal professionals were the sole holders of legal knowledge. The law lived behind a door, and you had to pay to get in. That model rested on one simple thing: asymmetry. You didn’t know, they knew, and that distance was the very value of the profession.

The internet cracked that model. Artificial intelligence and the new search engines are finishing it off. Today, a citizen types in their question and gets a first answer within seconds — imperfect, sometimes, but real. The new generation does not experience this as a threat. They grew up inside it. For them, demystifying the law is not betraying the profession: it is making it useful.

The clearest sign of this shift is that technological competence is no longer optional. It has been written into the Code of ethics of advocates since 2020, and the Bar even made a course on artificial intelligence mandatory in 2026. For the veterans, it is a forced adaptation. For the next generation, it is a mother tongue. These professionals do not ask whether justice should be modernized — they ask why it wasn’t done sooner.

IV — Power

Two generations, two relationships with power

Let’s be fair: the older generation built solid things, and many of its members defended access to justice with sincerity. But it was shaped in a particular world — one of self-regulation, prestige, control over information. A world where the public’s trust was presumed rather than earned. As long as no one measured that trust, the model held.

We measure it now. And the result says clearly that the presumption no longer holds. The reflex of an institution born in the culture of control, faced with a loss of trust, is almost always the same: take back control. Tighten the message. Communicate better. Yet that is precisely the opposite of what the moment demands. In 2026, trust is not taken back — it is earned through transparency. And transparency, by definition, means giving up trying to control everything.

V — The summit

A summit, and an awkward question

The Bar clearly sensed it: on September 8 and 9, it will bring together roughly 750 people at the Palais des congrès in Montreal for the very first Quebec Summit on the Rule of Law, under the theme “Uniting to protect our rule of law.” The intention is sound, and the initiative deserves credit. But a question remains, and it must be asked: have they truly understood what was happening?

Because here is the knot. The boards and bodies steering these reflections are, by design, made up of the figures of the current system — the big names, the veterans, those the old order shaped and rewarded. They are being asked to diagnose a crisis their own model is, in part, the cause of. Can the right answers really be found from the top of the mountain, at a time when AI, transparent search engines and algorithms mean that no institution can manage everything from above anymore?

And as long as institutions have not acknowledged that the monopoly on information and self-regulation are no longer viable, a summit — however sincere and well-intentioned — will remain a smokescreen rather than a real solution.

This is not an attack. It is a question of vantage point. You do not see the same thing depending on where you are standing. And it may well be that the people best placed to understand the justice of 2026 are not those who run it, but those who are entering it.

Conclusion

To the next generation: it’s you, and it’s now

So let’s say it plainly, to you who are studying law, doing your articling, who have just been sworn in or are in your first years of practice.

You are not the next generation “of tomorrow.” You are already the answer to the question an entire profession is asking today.

You chose the citizen over secrecy. You find it natural to explain the law instead of locking it away. You give your time before you even have a firm. You see technology as a bridge to people, not a threat to your fees. This way of seeing is not naïve — it is exactly what Quebec justice needs to win back the trust it has lost.

Don’t let anyone convince you that you must wait your turn to do things right. And here at EnDroit.ca, we see you, we hear you, and we are betting on you.