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The Faculty of Law is a constituent faculty of McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, one of the most prestigious universities in North America. It is the oldest law faculty in Canada and was officially created in 1848, as a response to a petition from 23 young men who had been studying independently for the bar. Before that, lawyers in Quebec, like in the United States, did not need a law degree and typically pursued five year apprenticeships to be called to the bar. The programme counts influential Canadian Prime Ministers and Supreme Court Justices among its graduates.
Students obtain both a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) and Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L.), concurrently, in three to four years, allowing them to practice in both the Canadian, U.S. and U.K. common law system as well as Quebec's civil law system.
Admission: Admission to the programme is extremely competitive, as candidates are selected on a holistic basis, in addition to outstanding academic records. Recommendations, work experience, graduate studies, experience abroad, community involvement and leadership skills are considered in admissions decisions. The faculty receives nine times more applicationsthan the 170 available spaces in the first year class, making it one of the lowest admissions rates in North America (around 11-12%). McGill is slightly less selective than the most selective top-tier U.S. law schools, which have admissions rates of 5-7%Quebec and focus on the French civil law, which reduces the potential applicant pool. LSAT is not required for admission, but for those admitted who did take LSAT, the median LSAT score is 161. [http://www.lsac.org/canadianCFC/template2.asp?url=Schools/McGill.htm" target="_blank" >*. Canadian students of aboriginal ancestry are actively recruited by the admissions office in an ongoing effort to increase aboriginal enrollment across Canadian law faculties.
Costs: The Faculty of Law is known for its low tuition rate, and commitment to ensure access to legal education regardless of ability to pay: approximate tuition & fees $3,036 (Quebec students); $5,951 (non-Quebec Canadians); $13,082 (International students). *
Recruitment: Leading law firms from New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and elsewhere in Canada as well as in Europe (London and Paris) and Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo) are employers of many McGill law graduates. In 2005, McGill was one of a handful of leading law faculties (including Michigan, Yale, Columbia, Harvard, NYU, Geneva and Strasbourg) to be invited by the International Court of Justice to supply clerks to the Judges. No other law faculty in Canada receives as many on campus recruiters from the most prestigious law firms in New York - the world's largest and most competitive legal market - including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Sullivan and Cromwell, Gottleib and others. Many students are fluent in both English and French, making them uniquely attractive for clerkships at the bilingual Supreme Court of Canada. Eight students were selected as Supreme Court of Canada Clerks in 2005, and similar numbers went to other appeals courts across Canada.
Unique Bi-juridicial Intellectual Environment: McGill's present programme is the development of the National Programme (inaugurated with the incoming class in 1968). It remains the only one of its kind in the world, allowing undergraduates to develop an appreciation for both civil and common law traditions while working in a bilingual environment. The National Programme mostly taught the common law and civil law in separate courses. It only combined their study in a year-long introductory “Foundations” course and in some upper-year seminars.
Since 1999, under the direction of then Dean Stephen Toope (currently President of the University of British Columbia), the faculty dramatically redesigned the programme, making it the only law faculty in the world where every student graduates with degrees in both civil law and common law, representing the two major legal systems of the western world. The reconfigured programme, renamed “Trans-Systemic Programme”, teaches through philosophy and comparative law across its curriculum; in a way that is kept for graduate law study nearly everywhere else in the world. From the first year, courses now explore civil law and common law concepts in close comparison whenever possible. Students analyse and critically evaluate the two traditions, their histories, as well as their social, political, and cultural contexts. Theoretical perspectives are integrated into legal doctrine, so as to yield insight into legal practice. This bijuridicial, trans-systemic programme is unique in the world.
Graduate Studies: The Faculty of Law has a highly-regarded graduate programme in law, offering the LL.M. (Master of Laws) and D.C.L. (Doctor of Civil Law) degrees through two institutes: the Institute of Comparative Law; and the Institute of Air and Space Law. Recently, McGill began to offer a non-thesis LL.M. option. The majority of students in these programmes are international, and admission to both Institutes is very selective.
Funding Concerns: McGill's low tuition rate and chronic underfunding of higher education by the Quebec government has led to sustained efforts by the administration to increasingly rely on individual philanthropists and alumni to remain competitive with peer institutions. The high-tech Nahum Gelber Law Library was almost entirely funded by alumni and friends of the faculty. In 2005, a multi-million dollar private endowment enabled the establishment of graduate fellowships in human rights scholarship. Still, the faculty's operating budget remains modest in comparison with its peer institutions in Canada and the United States.
Renowned Faculty Members: Prominent faculty members have included constitutional specialist and civil libertarian F.R. Scott, human rights lawyer and former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler, noted internationalist Eugene Lafleur, and John Peters Humphrey, the founding Director of the United Nations Human Rights division and author of the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948. Other recent notables include Stephen Toope (constitutional scholar, head of the Trudeau Foundation and current President of the University of British Columbia); Dr. Payam Akhavan (UN legal adviser and former genocide researcher at the Yale Law School) and Professor Stephen Smith (former tutor at Oxford University and author of the leading UK textbook "Atiyah's Introduction to the law of Contracts").
History: For a highly-informative as well as enjoyable history of the Faculty of Law, consult "'A Noble Roster': One Hundred and Fifty Years of Law at McGill" (McGill University, 1999), by Ian C. Pilarczyk. This work is divided thematically rather than chronologically, making it an unusual example of this genre.
External links
"McGill University Faculty of Law"