The University of Manitoba's Faculty of Law offers an exceptional legal education where students experience dynamic and innovative experiential and classroom learning, and receive the highest training in the skills of critical and analytical thinking, advocacy and legal research. Located in Robson Hall on the banks of the Red River on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Ojibwe-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Red River Métis, the UM Faculty of Law is proud of its tradition of innovation.
A Tradition of Innovation
The UM Faculty of Law is one of the oldest law schools in Western Canada, founded in 1914 by Hugh Amos Robson and Esten Kenneth Williams in partnership with the Law Society of Manitoba and the University of Manitoba. Housed in Robson Hall on the northeast corner of UM's Fort Garry Campus, the Faculty is directly across the Red River from Riel House - the birthplace of Louis Riel, Father of Manitoba and a founder of the Métis Nation.
We are pleased to present the Faculty of Law’s Strategic Plan from 2022-2025 approved by our Faculty Council in August 2022.
The Plan builds on earlier strategic plans, curricular innovation reports and clinical program studies, and develops values and principles to assist our progression in the coming years and will help frame the environment in which students, faculty, staff, alumni and community partners work, study and learn.
For more than 100 years, graduates of the UM Faculty of Law made great achievements in their careers, using their educations to make a difference in the lives of so many. In the classroom, emphasis is on the legal challenges facing society and the modern legal profession. We seek to educate leaders who promote social justice and progress through economy and human rights, with emphasis on training members of the legal profession who will serve the public good.
Our students have opportunities to study with accomplished professors whose works are widely published in leading journals, boasting national and international standing, with research clusters focusing on Immigration and Criminal law. Along with endowed research Chairs devoted to Private Enterprise as well as International Business and Trade law, our award-winning professors engage in tri-council-supported research aimed at finding solutions to real problems faced by Canadians today in areas including Indigenous, Family, Health, and Human Rights Law.
Legal education in Manitoba started in 1877, when the Law Society of Manitoba introduced an articling system and examinations protocols aimed at encouraging local Manitoba residents to pursue legal careers. Prior to that date, most lawyers in Manitoba had trained at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, or in Europe. In 1914, Hugh Amos Robson, then a judge on the Court of King's Bench and Esten Kenneth Williams, a young lawyer at the time, worked together to create the Manitoba Law School, with the intention of modelling it after Osgoode Hall, from which Williams had recently graduated. Sponsored by the Law Society of Manitoba and the University of Manitoba, the Manitoba Law School was formally created in the summer of 1914.
