What’s New in the Canadian Common Law LLM: Practice Skills for Internationally Trained Lawyers

OsgoodePD’s Professional LLM in Canadian Common Law may be 10 years old, but the program isn’t resting on its laurels. In Fall 2024, a new stream of practice skills courses will be introduced. Developed by our Director, Faculty and Curriculum Development, Audrey Fried, in partnership with instructors Shelley Kierstead and Germán Morales Farah, the courses offer students the opportunity to integrate their substantive knowledge and skills from several courses in a way that simulates the realities of Canadian legal practice.

In CCLW 6609 Canadian Legal Strategy, Research, and Writing, students will go beyond the key legal research and writing skills; they will draw on material from Professional Responsibility and Constitutional Law courses to develop interview, communication, and strategy skills and will learn how these skills work together with legal research and writing skills to serve the needs of clients. Students will deploy their skills in authentic tasks as they are called on to draft practice documents, as well as writing memoranda of law, opinion letters, and demand letters.

In CCLW 6638 Canadian Business Transactions, students will move from a solid foundation in Canadian law related to corporate and commercial transactions into exercises involving communication, strategy, drafting, and negotiation. Students will prepare practice documents, plan due diligence, conduct or review selected regulatory searches, and negotiate key terms of a transaction.

Finally, CCLW 6610 Capstone: Canadian Law in Practice builds on these skills as students work in a virtual firm environment, completing both a litigation and a transactional file and engaging in structured reflection on these new skills and experiences. The course will also focus on client relationship skills.

These new offerings promise a unique opportunity for internationally trained lawyers to meld practical skills from other jurisdictions with Canadian substantive law and practice techniques.