Canadian Common Law LLM alumni Puja Dutta

The Covid-19 pandemic had one big silver lining for Puja Dutta.

The disease wrought the same havoc on her work and home life in northern India as it did for most people around the world. But the disruptive nature of pandemic life also shook Dutta out of the comfortable pre-lockdown routine she had settled into, giving her the spur she needed to seek a fresh challenge and finally enrol in OsgoodePD’s Professional LLM in Canadian Common Law program.

With more than a decade of experience in the Indian legal industry, Dutta had established herself as a key member of the legal department for global consulting firm Accenture, drafting and negotiating cross-border deals, as well as advising on a variety of commercial issues in her role as contract manager.

“I’d always wanted to do a master’s degree, but I had put it on the back burner for professional and family reasons over the years,” Dutta says. “When Covid happened, it gave me the sense that if I’m not going to do it now, I might never do it. So that’s when I took the leap of faith.”

Dutta traces her interest in legal matters back to a university course on business law taken while she studied for her Bachelor of Commerce degree, but says the influence of her single-parent mother was instrumental as she transformed her newfound passion into a career.

“My mother was divorced and didn’t want me to have to fight through all the ugliness, harassment and other bad things she had to deal with in her marriage,” Dutta explains. “It was not just about having a well-paid job. She also thought it would be good for me to have a legal awareness of my rights.”

Canada was always Dutta’s first preference destination for broadening her academic and professional horizons, with Osgoode’s Canadian Common Law program the natural choice of LLM because of the way its core courses are specifically designed to meet the requirements of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s National Committee on Accreditation.

Once her classes started, Dutta says she was particularly impressed by the Canadian Common Law program’s focus on problem-based learning, which is designed to help internationally trained lawyers to combine their existing hands-on experience in other jurisdictions with Canadian substantive law and practice techniques.

“When I graduated in India, there was a lot of mugging up and cramming of caselaw, but at Osgoode, it was very applied,” she says. “The nature of study was more about knowing concepts and putting them into practice.”

According to Dutta, the law school also made a big impact on her life outside the classroom:

“Osgoode was with me from the moment I got the offer, protecting me and guiding me on how I needed to adapt myself to the Canadian education system,” she says. “As an international student, they’re not just giving you everything you need to become a lawyer in Canada, they’re giving you the confidence to show that you are as good, as qualified and as capable as any other lawyers over here.”

After her 2022 graduation, Dutta was hired as a contract manager for financial transaction network Interac.

“It’s a step up from the work I was doing in India. This is the culmination of the rigorous academics I experienced at Osgoode and my professional history back home,” she says.

To internationally trained lawyers thinking of following in her footsteps, Dutta says Osgoode’s Canadian Common Law LLM will give them all the tools they need to thrive in this country.

“First, you need to understand your own interests, have your own goals that you are working towards and then you can leverage the considerable resources that are available to you at Osgoode,” she adds. “You need to have comfort with what you are bringing to the table. Your experience is going to be different to that of your classmates, but it’s not more or less than theirs; it’s unique to you and it’s what sets you apart.”