This article is written by Aanika Aery, currently pursuing B.B.A. LLB from Symbiosis Law School, Noida. This is an exhaustive article which deals with the scope of Indian lawyers in Canada
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Canadian National Committee on Accreditation (NCA) has announced that the degrees of law practitioners from India should be considered equal to those in the United Kingdom and Australia in their international examination of qualifications of professionals wishing to practice in Canada. “Three-year full-day degrees in law from the Common Law States like India, England and Australia have been accepted by the National Accreditation Committee (NCA) to be considered, fairly regardless of the country of source,” said Vern Krishna, executive director of the NCA. “The barriers to entry into the legal profession are greatly reduced.”
In addition to laws from India, Australia and Scotland, the NCA equivalently addresses those from the United States, Hong Kong, Ireland, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore and New Zealand. While Indian legal professionals wishing to work in Canada have eliminated a great obstacle to entry, all foreign-trained legal professionals must still pass qualifying exams in six subjects and pass bar exams to be eligible for practice. Internationally educated skilled staff and professionals continue to face the biggest challenge to international acceptance, remarks Minister Jason Kenney of Citizenship and Immigration, Canada. In recent years, he says, the allocations for the program on foreign credentials have tripled. Federal and provincial governments are working to create an international structure for the recognition of foreign qualifications in order to facilitate the processes of credential assessment and integration of newcomers.
To know more about the scope of Indian lawyers in Canada in brief, please refer to the video below:
Job market
Law is seen as one of Canada’s top occupations in the future. Canada is waiting for you with great potential when you have a Bachelor in Pre-Law, a First Degree in law and a Bar exam. The starting salary is CAD 72,000 a year for an attorney in Canada. Canada provides multiple career opportunities in different fields of law. However, the opportunities for employment are rising due to the declining number of lawyers. Lawyers in all fields, ranging from corporate to criminal law, are in high demand. Lawyers seek to ensure that the interests of an organization or person are secured. The job specifications depend on the students’ type of law.
The ranking associations have ranked theToronto University in the 16th position, McGill University in the 13th, and 17th to Law in British Columbia University, respectively. QS World Rankings were ranked 51-100th in legal studies by the University of British Columbia.
Top career options
With a degree in law in Canada, students can work as a consultant, a chartered accounting officer, a civil service administrator, data analyst, a forensic computer analyst, a human resources officer, a patent attorney, a stockbroker, a corporate standards officer or a professional standards officer. In a number of market segments, the provision of legal services by Canadian lawyers is stratified:
- Practising alone;
- Micro and small-scale companies;
- Large regional or domestic companies;
- Large and multi-legal companies;
- In-house counsel and attorneys who work in other fields of business;
- Governments as well as NGOs.
Alternate areas of employment include:
Academic Management and Education
Students may select non-teaching positions in universities in addition to teaching at a college or university. In Canada, law schools accept lawyers qualified in recruitment, graduate relations, career resources and law libraries.
Banking and financial services
If students are experienced in securities, trusts and property, tax law or banking law, they can use this in the banking and financial sectors. The career opportunities include a risk manager, property planning consultant, trust director, financial advisor, commercial credit officer and fund manager.
Management of disputes
There are growing areas of arbitration, mediation and negotiation. Persons with good organizational skills and ability to settle conflicts are hired by trade unions, hospitals, school boards, universities and state authorities.
State and international relations
Lawyers are also employed as policy consultants in provincial and federal governments. In written reports, they collect and evaluate knowledge and problems. They coordinate strategic policy development. The health, transport, educational and environmental issues will be the areas of policy.
Human Capital Human Resources
Companies are trying to recruit skilled people. Lawyers are often recruiting coordinators, assistants or training supervisors. There are also other job opportunities, such as an administrator of a company, a head of recruiting, a marketing officer, etc.
Legal advice
If a student is technically competent, then he can use his legal software expertise to serve as an IT consultant. There is also an option for a legal nurse consultant if a student has a history of nursing.
Legal writing
Several lawyers use their experience in the study and work as independent legal authors and publishers. They not only publish legal documents, they even write law books for themselves. In Canada, you can also work as a journalist or magazine writer or write material for websites of law firms.
In addition, if you choose to work in non-traditional careers, a degree in law may also be useful to you. Such positions include an accountant, a consultant, an ethics officer, a probation officer, a consumer advocate, a librarian, an auditor, among others. The clients now demand consistency in the services offered as far as the law is concerned in Canada.
Ontario’s trained lawyer program
Do you intend to stay and work in Canada?
When choosing to move to which city or town, there are many things to consider. Canada is a wide country and it is distinguished by different environments of breathtaking natural beauty.
How are you going to pick the right city for you?
The response is often the best way to help your career. Toronto, Ontario, is the place to be if you are an internationally trained lawyer who wants to pursue his legal career. The province is Canada’s most multicultural, it’s a thriving society founded on the hard work of generations and attracts some of the world’s best and brightest. The province’s capital, Toronto, is the centre of international trade, culture and education. Toronto offers a huge array of legal employers and offers a variety of opportunities for professional advancement and personal growth if you are an Indian lawyer planning to immigrate into Canada. You can find that there are a lot of steps to take when you come to Toronto before you can practice law, even though you have a degree and practice in your own country.
The program
The program aims at preparation and, ultimately, support in their career goals and prepares for their employment for internationally trained lawyer licensing in Canada. The ITLP is North America’s only internationally trained and educated program in which lawyers are prepared to enter with trust the Canadian legal profession. For specific criteria for each lawyer, the ITLP provides services that are customized to the service level that you need. The NCA Review Program is a part-time program for students who only require academic support in preparation for their NCA exams. This is a four-days (21 hour) course that is offered evenings and weekends for maximum convenience. The NCAR program is also available virtually, so you can begin your studies online before your arrival in Canada. The BEPC Program is a part-time program for students who already have their NCA Certificate of Qualification, but who want academic support in preparing for the LSUC’s Licensing Exams. This is a two-week program that is offered on evenings and weekends, twice per year, immediately prior to the scheduled LSUC Licensing Exams. The ITLP has a tremendous team of dedicated staff who support the program broadly, and each student individually. From the very first day, you will meet fascinating people, learn from esteemed instructors who are experts in their fields and interact with motivated and talented peers from around the globe.
The ITLP has a large team of committed people who widely and personally support the System. You will meet interesting individuals from the very first day, learn from respected teachers who are experts and connect with inspired and talented colleagues from all over the world. ITLP students have a wide variety of backgrounds, but all share a passion for law and a desire to become lawyers in Canada.
NCA Accreditation
Most international lawyers can not practice law in Canada because of their licenses not being recognized there. That is why a re-certification process has been established by the National Accreditation Committee, which assesses law qualifications earned from outside Canada and offers foreign lawyers the ability to speed up training for the Canadian Bar Exam. In other words, NCA aims to ensure that a degree earned from abroad or a degree of law in Canada is in line with Canada’s national requirements of law professionals. NCA is a standing board of the Federation for Law Societies of Canada (FLSC). Thus, applicants in Canadian provinces and/or territories do not have to meet specific entry criteria for testing. The only difference is that the province of Quebec has separate assessment processes as the Barreau du Québec and the Chamber of Notaires du Québec. The NCA examination must be carried out before seeking a license to practise law under a Canadian common law jurisdiction.
The NCA Assessment
Internationally trained lawyers may request an application for the NCA assessment at all times, even before they arrive in Canada (citizenship and residency are not reviewed during the evaluation process). In order to process the NCA review, the FLSC defines the following formalities:
- Online application form for an assessment, including CAN$450 payment plus related taxes;
- Complete collection of transcripts (copies are not accepted) from the institution of your studies;
Set of documents that the institution in which you completed your legal training shall send to the NCA, including:
- a copy of the academic transcripts officially;
- (if applicable) a certificate or a letter from the local regulatory authorities of good standing membership; and
- (if applicable) an official copy of your transcripts of any courses or exams needed by that authority from the local regulatory authority;
- language competence of a minimum of 7.0 for each of the IELTS test modules (for English) or of TESTCan (for Franco). (If the official language of instruction in the law graduate or official language of jurisdiction was different from French or English). If sufficient evidence is provided, this requirement may be waived.
After the Assessment
Each applicant is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, determining the expertise and credentials of the applicants, the course and subjects, academic achievement, the type of legal system in which education was obtained and other similar requirements.
When the assessment is complete, the applicants should submit their assessment report detailing the list of criteria they will meet in order to obtain a Certification Certificate. The specifications can be classified into three different types:
- NCA tests passed;
- Courses in different areas of law at a school under Canadian rule;
- Completion of a curriculum of Canadian common law.
NCA Exam
The NCA tests can be reported for applicants who have earned their NCA evaluation. That test takes about 3 hours and follows the open book style, paper-and-pen, pass-or-fail. For each examination session, candidates must pre-register and they may do so 4-6 weeks before the examination begins. You can find the starting dates on the exam schedule for 2017. The results of the NCA exam are released 10-12 weeks after the test date. CAN$340 plus related taxes is the cost of each NCA check. Applicants can resume examinations twice, paying the NCA examination fee each time.
Conclusion
The immigration code is given to every occupation in the Canada NOC Registry, and the code is 4112 for people who wish to emigrate as a lawyer to Canada. The NOC code for a solicitor is also identified. You would no doubt have read online that getting a work offer to move into Canada is a requirement for obtaining express entry, but as an attorney, you would also have other choices in order to obtain Canada Visas from the beginning. Lawyers are first of all eligible to apply to Canadian Immigration as part of the Immigration System of the Canadian Government because of their high demand for lawyers in Canada.
You will require two to four years of a university program and a law student/bachelor of law degree from a renowned school of law to become a practising lawyer in Canada. Then, you have to complete an articling cycle, a bar admission and an examination and be licensed in the region/province where you are planning to operate. Some law schools only need a university study of two or three years, while others choose an undergraduate degree. Some schools need only two or three years. If you have completed your undergraduate degree, your application would probably be more competitive. Some law firms from Toronto and domestic lawyers also assign routine work for high-volume lawyers in countries such as India and the Philippines. All legal initiatives appropriate for externalization abroad include contract analysis, drawing up standard documents and summarizing electronic discovery transcripts. That’s because an Indian lawyer paying $25 an hour is charged by state law but far less than a Canadian lawyer paying $25 an hour.
Business analysts say that they see a business with companies pursuing F&A as well as investment opportunities, and after two years of sub-5 per cent growth, the market is expected to turn around. Indian lawyers with dual-qualifications – qualified in India and abroad – are hunted by foreign companies. Indian laws bar international companies from getting an office or consultant in India. Yet they will do so in partnership with the Indian bar and in partnership with Indian law firms.
References
- https://www.legallyindia.com/sponsored-posts/canada-internationally-trained-lawyers-program-20130923-3992
- https://www.nationwidevisas.com/latest-news/canada-immigration-for-indian-lawyers/
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