Qualifying as a lawyer in Canada following completion of the Common Law LLB
In order to qualify as a lawyer in Canada (in a jurisdiction other than Quebec), after completing a common law LLB at Glasgow, a student must:
- Apply for a National Committee on Accreditation (NCA) assessment
- Gain a NCA Certificate of Qualification
- Complete a bar admission process in a common law jurisdiction in Canada, and complete any further required training (e.g. a legal traineeship, usually known as ‘Articling’)
The NCA Assessment and Certification processes are set out in the NCA Policy Manual. The current version of the Manual is available from the NCA’s website, which provides other relevant information. Both the website, and the Manual, should be consulted first-hand. They are authoritative sources of information on the Assessment and Certification processes.
In order to gain the NCA Certificate of Qualification, students will need to demonstrate competency in eight (8) Core Subjects. These are:
Canadian Administrative Law
Canadian Constitutional Law
Canadian Criminal Law
Canadian Professional Responsibility
Foundations of Canadian Law
Contracts
Property
Torts
The first five core subjects have Canadian-specific content. Competency in these areas is demonstrated by taking NCA examinations in those subjects, or completing a course covering those areas in an Approved Canadian Common Law Programme. The former is the most cost-efficient route to take, but some students prefer to have guided instruction in the modules, rather than taking the exams on a self-study basis.
An Applicant may demonstrate competence in the other Core Subjects (Contracts, Property and Torts) by completing relevant courses as part of the Glasgow LLB degree, subject to Legal Academic Performance requirements set out in the NCA Policy Manual.
Graduates of the 4-year honours Common Law LLB
In Canada, students will ordinarily have completed a non-law degree before studying law at university. For equivalence purposes, the NCA Policy Manual specifies a two-year ‘Pre-Law Education’ requirement in a university-level program. However, an applicant can apply to have this requirement waived in various circumstances, including where they have a law degree of four years in length (the length of the Glasgow Common Law honours degree). Even if the requirement is not waived, the ‘deficiency’ in pre-law education can be addressed by completing Additional Legal Subjects in the NCA exams. Therefore, in some circumstances, studying a four year-law degree at Glasgow may be a quicker and cost-efficient route to qualification in Canada. After completing the four-year law degree at Glasgow, students could also pursue further postgraduate education (e.g. a one year LLM degree) in order to satisfy the pre-law education requirement, and a postgraduate degree is often a selling point for employers.
Graduates of the 2-year accelerated Common Law LLB
Canadian law degrees are normally three years in length. The NCA specifies in its Policy Manual how students with shorter (e.g. two year) law degrees can demonstrate requisite competency where its Length of Law Programme requirement is not met. Most of our Canadian accelerated students typically do this by completion of Additional Legal Subjects through successful completion of NCA examinations (often two, but this is assessed on an individual basis), which are assigned to them by the NCA.
Where students are required to take Additional Legal Subjects, they will be assigned from the following list:
a. Business Organizations
b. Civil Procedure
c. Commercial Law
d. Evidence
e. Family Law
f. Remedies
A student will not ordinarily be assigned an Additional Legal Subject in this list which they have already studied at Glasgow.
Qualifying as a lawyer in the UK and in other countries
Information about qualifying as a lawyer in the UK and other countries is available here.
Reasons to study Law at the University of Glasgow
The key strengths of Glasgow’s undergraduate programmes are:
- Consistently high rankings for student experience
- A comprehensive, interdisciplinary and value orientated legal education
- International mobility and a global sensibility are core to our programmes
- Teaching excellence is a part of our culture
- Excellent and internationally flexible employability prospects.
The information on this page has been created according to current understandings of regulatory requirements, but applicants should always check and confirm requirements with relevant professional bodies.
If you have any questions about admissions requirements, please contact our Admissions Enquiry Team: https://www.gla.ac.uk/study/enquire/
If you have any specific questions about the degree structure and teaching, please contact: law-ug-enquiries@glasgow.ac.uk