Michelle De Agostini built her early career in prison librarianship, accessibility services, copyright, and information policy before completing the Graduate Diploma in Foundations of Canadian Law. She is now pursuing Osgoode’s Professional LLM in Constitutional Law – a trajectory that reflects the program’s appeal to professionals from outside traditional legal practice.
Before any of this, Michelle spent seven years as a legal assistant at a small criminal defense firm in Edmonton, then moved into library and information studies and eventually prison librarianship – a path she describes as accidental. While volunteering at the Edmonton Institution, a maximum-security prison, a programs manager asked if she knew anyone looking for work. “I told her I’d take it,” she says. “That’s how I got into prison libraries.” Running the library and coordinating book clubs gave her a close view of the correctional system, and a strong sense of purpose. “That work made me angry,” she says. “From what I witnessed inside, how prison operates amounts to a human rights violation.” That conviction drove her toward a more legal, human-rights-focused direction.
Michelle’s path to the Graduate Diploma was not the one she initially envisioned. She first applied to the Professional LLM in Criminal Law and was encouraged to consider the Graduate Diploma in Foundations of Canadian Law instead, but decided not to pursue it at that time. When she later applied to the Constitutional Law LLM, she was offered admission to the Graduate Diploma and chose to enroll. “It turned out to be a very good experience,” she says, “and it was necessary to build on the foundations I already had.”
The Graduate Diploma gave her a formal grounding in an intersection she’d already been navigating: the close relationship between library work and the law. “Libraries work with a great deal of public policy, law, and legislation,” she says. She points to what she calls the “right to read,” which she connects to section 2(b) of the Charter. That grounding proved useful when she pushed back against attempted book bans in prison libraries, using the institution’s own policy – a formal review required every six months – to ensure very few books were ever actually banned.
Her legal education became especially relevant when the Correctional Service of Canada moved to eliminate every librarian position in its prison system. Michelle learned of the decision independently and alerted the Canadian Prison Law Association – a connection she’d made with the help of the Graduate Diploma – which then helped mobilize opposition. The campaign succeeded, and the positions were retained. “I wouldn’t have been able to make that argument,” she says, “without my knowledge of what happens inside the prison, and my knowledge of the law – this is a human right that Canada has committed to uphold.”
During the Graduate Diploma, Michelle took a Selected Topics in Constitutional Law elective focused on comparative constitutionalism as a method of legal analysis. She chose to write her paper on plurinational constitutions in South America that recognize Indigenous peoples’ rights to their own territory. “That class was incredibly inspiring, and I really enjoyed it,” she says. “I love learning about the law.” The experience solidified her motivation to pursue the Constitutional Law LLM, and she’s now weighing where that education will lead – toward constitutional practice, policy work, or some combination of the two – with her studies already opening doors within human rights that she hadn’t previously considered.
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Michelle De Agostini – Program Assistant, Vancouver Island University’s Inside Out Prison Exchange Program
Graduate of OsgoodePD’s Graduate Diploma in Foundations of Canadian Law (2025)