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[Music] hi everyone my name is pearl oyema i'm here to do a video about how to get qualified as a lawyer in canada when you've already been qualified in a different jurisdiction so this is for foreign lawyers who are looking to become lawyers in canada and this is like my third time trying to film this video so bear with me because um this is my first video on youtube and i hope that i can give a bit of you know perspective and the information for all those who are looking to come into canada re-qualify and become and start working as lawyers um so the reason why i decided to start this to do this video is because when i started my own journey trying to requalify as a lawyer in canada it was very difficult to get the information i needed from one source i really just wanted to make a video where i could give like a brief overview of what the process is like to re-qualify in re-qualify as a lawyer in canada so i would say that the process is in four stages so the first stage would be to get your assessment done by the national committee on accreditation the second stage would be to complete the ncaa requirements usually their exams sometimes it would be to go back to law school but that's like for a different video so yeah you complete the pro the requirements of the nca and then you get your certificate of qualification the third stage would be to apply to um the law society of the province that you wish to become a member of and complete the requirements of that law society because in canada if you want to become a lawyer you don't just write one exam and become a lawyer that is qualified throughout canada you have to like pick a proven and then write the examinations and complete the requirements of that province and then the last stage would be to submit your by admission form so that would be like your to bar form and take the oath and be called to bar pay the required fees and then be called about so yeah so this video is going to be about the first stage which is the um which is the assessment process um just because it's quite a long process and i cannot like give you all the information that you need just in one video so it will be good to like just do different videos for each of the stages so for this day for this video is going to be about the first stage so the first stage like i said is um getting assessed and you're going to be assessed by a body called the national committee on accreditation which is a standing committee of the federation of the law societies of canada and what the nca does is it pretty much assesses the results of foreign trained lawyers to ensure that their qualifications is up to the standards of the canadian law society and so what what they would normally require you to do is to go on their website create a profile and um send to them your transcripts you would have to send them your undergraduate and if you have a graduate um results if you have graduate education you'll also have to send them your graduates transcript so um you send them your undergrad transcript your graduate transcript and your law school transcript of course so you have to send them your law school transcript and also for me i don't know if this is particular to people from my home country where i'm qualified in which is nigeria but you would have to also send a letter of good standing that you know you're in good standing with the law society where you're qualified and we normally get that from either the supreme court of nigeria or the bar association the nigerian bar association so you just have to send them all of those things and then they will go through your transcript you have to you typically have to give them um i believe it's three to six weeks i think mine took like three weeks yeah three to six weeks for them to assess your qualifications and get back to you as to what you're required to do now generally they would ask you to there's a way they assess the results so those from a common law jurisdiction which is nigeria is a common law jurisdiction they typically would assign you like five exams to take which is a canadian constitutional law administrative law criminal law foundations of canadian law and professional responsibility that's the ethics so those are like the five major exams they'll tell you to take sometimes there'll be like an additional exam date sometimes it'll be like um property law or it would be company law depending on what your transcript tells them that you did in law school um so that's what like i got i had to do those five exams if you're from a civil law jurisdiction which is like south africa you would have a couple more examples take i've heard of people getting like um nine nine exams assigned to them for them to you know take all those exams before they can begin to begin the process of actually getting licensed by in the province so um that's just how they assess the results here so um you give them three to six weeks they assess your results they get back to you with um concerning what you're required to do the next stage would be to complete those requirements so for the ncas there aren't um a lot of resources because they don't publish their past examination questions and they don't necessarily have like classes for you to take but they do have pathways so what that means is that you can either like write the five exams or you go back to um university here and do like a master's like it has to be a masters that has kind of like acknowledged by the ncaa as meeting their requirements so it might be a master's in common law or something like that but you don't just go in and do a master's you do have to get um your your course of study okay by the nca like okay yes that meets our requirements so that's like one part way to go um another thing is they might also assess someone's results and and say oh you know what you might have to go back and do law school in canada but i've never heard of a case like that because you know law school here is pretty much three years it's a jd so i've never heard of cases like that usually most lawyers who come here have been practicing for a couple of years and so they just want you to like you know get to know the canadian legal system which is why they assign you a certain number they set a number of exams um so yeah so you write those exams um they do take the exams four times a year so there's one in january there's one in may there's another one in august i believe and then there's usually one in october so january may august and october um i took mine 2019 january and may and you can take all of your exams at once if you want but that is usually not recommended um the exams are theory based exams so um you you do have to like you know prepare properly for those exams it depends on you know how you are as a person how you read how you study um how easy it is for you to assimilate new new information um for me i did two exams in january and then i did three exams in may of 2019 so it just depends i did meet people on the exam day who were writing the exam like five exams all at once um i've heard of stories of people who actually passed all five exams at once so it just depends on you know your caliber of person what what is best for you um but you're not restricted to just one exam or just two exams the only restriction is for you to complete those exams within four years i believe like once you receive your requirements for me for those who get five exams you are required to complete the five exams within four years so that's like the only limitation i know about the exams the exams are open book um the exams are as i when i took them in 2015 it was like 350 plus gst plus taxes um so yeah it's i mean it's cheaper than going back to school um but it's you know it's almost the same thing you're going to have to study so just make sure that whatever decision you make on how you want to take the exams or what pathway you want to take that you are comfortable with it you know and it works for you okay um so after you do the exams you typically you would normally give them um two about two months and three weeks pretty much three months for the results to come out and that's just weighties i don't know why it takes them that long but but it does take them that long so um i had to wait till i believe it was like the end of july because i wrote the exam mid-may so the results came out um sorry the results came out in yeah end of july was when the results came out so yeah you get your results typically um within eight to 12 weeks within eight to twelve weeks so when you get your results you would also get your certificate of qualification um sent to your home address whatever addresses that is on your file and okay you know what before the results come out you would have informed the ncaa of the law societies that you wish to apply to so i chose bc alberta and manitoba i ended up staying in bc because um when i when i came to canada this was i came to bc so um i ended up like you know get applying to the law society of british columbia and um having the nca send my certified true copy of my letter of good standing as well as my a copy of my certificate of qualification to the law societies i had you know put in as my preference so they normally would send them like your transcript just showing that you know this person has completed the requirements i'm not really i can't really remember how that goes i can't remember if i called to have it sent you know if it was like online i believe i had to go online to my profile and then um ask for them to send my certificate of qualification to so so schools like like i had to like pick the law societies i wanted to send it to i think that was how it went but that's like the final stage of the ncaa once you've gotten your certificate of qualification you move on to the next stage which is to apply to the law society and each of the law societies here each of the provinces have their own law societies and all those laws societies have different rules they have like um different requirements for how you apply to the law society so for me i can only i can only speak of i can only speak on bc's requirement because that's the process i'm in right now and i would just say like just very quickly because i probably would have to make another video for this just because it's getting into 15 minutes right now and i don't want the video to be so long so um for bc once you get your certificate of qualification you would have to download some application forms online and you fill out those forms and at this stage you would have found something called the atticlin which is like the equivalent of a training contract in the uk which is where you intern in law firm for a year and you need to have the after clean contract that is you have to have found a principal you have to have found a law firm that you know wants to take you on as their student their attican students some like a trainee pretty much like a legal trainee and you both of you both you and your principal enter into that article in agreement and you submit that agreement along with all the other application forms that are required of you to submit so that's just like briefly the next step of the that that leads into the second stage so i hope that i have been able to give you some information about the beginning stage stages of how to become a lawyer in canada if you are requalifying in canada and this is like i said for foreign trained lawyers if you have any questions please ask me in the comment section i will try to answer your questions by replying or making another video so we'll see how it goes but i'm hoping to put out more content i have just you know i'm at the last stages of my asset clean i have been doing the attic thing since october of 2019 so i can talk about what the asta clean process is like i can talk about what the qualification process is like in bc i can talk about the bar exams um so there are a couple of videos i'm going to do concerning um re-qualifying that delorean canada and if you would like to see those the kind of videos please subscribe i'm also going to be having other kinds of content on my youtube channel i'm going to be doing videos about african literature because i love to read i mean i feel like all lawyers love to love to read i'm not sure but like i do love to read and so i'm going to be doing book reviews and things like that i'm also going to be talking about um issues pertaining to african development just because i'm very passionate about like um the development and growth of africa which is you know something that is always spoken about but you know i just want us to like continue talking about it and continue thinking and working towards making a continent a great continent you know so that's just one of the other things i would like to do as well and then lifestyle videos you might see me here doing my makeup you might see me getting ready for work things like that i'm just hoping to put out some great content for people that are interested in things that i like so i hope that this helps you and i'm very happy to have sat down and made this video so see you guys next time thanks