New requirements for all Internationally Trained Lawyers

There are two new requirements for all Internationally Trained Lawyers going through the accreditation process with the National Committee on Accreditation (NCA) in Canada that came into effect on March 1, 2026.

Indigenous Law and Peoples

All Internationally Trained Lawyers are now required to demonstrate competence in Indigenous Law and Peoples (Policy Manual, Section 10.5).  The NCA wants to make sure everyone understands:

1. The history and legacy of residential schools
2. The United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples;
3. Aboriginal-Crown relations;
4. Concepts used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous lands and peoples, such as Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius; and
5. Systematic discrimination against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people

It is important that all lawyers in Canada have strong foundations in the principles of the Canadian legal system, in how Indigenous legal traditions interact with Canadian law and in the frameworks for reconciliation and Indigenous rights.  This new requirement from the NCA ensures that Internationally Trained Lawyers develop this understanding right from the beginning of their careers in Canada.  This new requirement also mirrors a mandate for already licensed Canadian lawyers to have Indigenous cultural training. This requirement is already incorporated into the competency requirements of the law societies of British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and the Northwest Territories.  This requirement is in development in Yukon and the Law Society of Ontario has just approved an Indigenous cultural training course for licensed lawyers on February 26, 2026.  These initiatives will allow lawyers to be better prepared to improve access to justice and promote reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples.

The Indigenous Law and Peoples requirement can be satisfied through a module that the NCA has developed or through NCA approved courses at a recognized Canadian law school.  We are working quickly to incorporate these topics into new courses in Osgoode’s Professional LLM in Canadian Common Law.

Language Screening Requirement

The second new requirement is an update to the language proficiency requirement (Policy Manual, Section 11).   All Internationally Trained Lawyers are required to demonstrate proficiency in communicating in English or French.  Unless exempted, all Internationally Trained Lawyers going through the accreditation process must complete a single attempt of a language screening test to demonstrate language proficiency, the cost of which is included in the accreditation assessment fee.  You can be exempted from this test if you provide a valid language test that is less than 2 years old and obtaining the requisite scores.  Passing the proctored language screening test will demonstrate the required proficiency.  You must complete the language screening test, or be exempted from it, before the NCA will issue an assessment decision.

The NCA has selected the Versant English Placement Test as their chosen language screen test.  This test measures how well a person can understand spoken and written English and respond appropriately in speaking and writing on everyday topics, at an appropriate pace in intelligible English.  Test takers proceed through 8 automatically scored tasks: read aloud, repeats, sentence builds, conversations, sentence completion, dictation, passage reconstruction and summary and opinion.  The test takes about 50 minutes and is administered through a browser-based system.  Booking for this test is currently live.  If an applicant does not pass the language screening test, they will be assigned the requirement to pass a language test as a part of the assessment decision.

The French test is still currently in development.

The release of the details of the test has thankfully alleviated some of the concerns that Internationally Trained Lawyers have had over the last few months in anticipation of this new requirement becoming effective.  As the NCA rolls out this test and these new requirements there will hopefully be more information coming out about candidate performance and competence.

We look forward to hearing more about this roll out from Deborah Wolfe, Executive Director of the NCA who will be speaking at this year’s Osgoode’s Internationally Trained Lawyers Day.  Osgoode’s Internationally Trained Lawyers Day is designed for lawyers and law graduates from around the globe, as well as those navigating the process of accreditation or licensing independently and it will be taking place on June 3, 2026.  If you have any questions for the NCA about these new requirements consider joining us this year.