Amicus Online Summer 2003

Learning the Law on Both Sides of the Border

GLOBALIZATION HAS SAVVY PROFESSIONALS EMBRACING A TRANSNATIONAL APPROACH TO BUSINESS. INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION AND ITS ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES NOW HAVE LAW FIRMS AND LAW STUDENTS FOCUSED ON GAINING BROADER KNOWLEDGE OF FOREIGN LEGAL SYSTEMS.

BY CATHERINE HANSFORD

Understanding that expanding the curriculum to include legal studies from Canada brings value to the law school, Michigan State University-DCL College of Law has created a JD-LLB joint degree program with the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada. Students who complete the program are eligible to sit for the bar exam in both countries.

Once accepted into the four-year program, students pay tuition only to the university that initially granted them admission to law school. No further application to the other college is required. Students must complete their first year at their initial law school but have the flexibility of attending either school during the final three years, although they’re required to spend two full academic years at each. They also must complete compulsory course requirements at both law schools.

Encouraging excellence, program eligibility is limited to students in the top half of their class. During 2002-03, the law school was host to three second-year law students from the University of Ottawa. Considered the program’s “trailblazers,” the three learned of their acceptance last July and by August were in East Lansing for the start of school. Twelve MSU-DCL students and five Ottawa students will participate during 2003-04.

Sarah Topp

Among this year’s students was Sarah Topp from Sudbury, Ontario, and a Laurentien University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in history. Topp is proud to be part of the program and feels that MSU-DCL has welcomed the Canadian law students in a way she hadn’t expected. “We were never really outsiders when we got here,” Topp explained. “I’ve never been at a university that is so accommodating.” The caring attitude, level of accessibility and close interaction have surprised her.

Topp grew up in Canadian law. Her father was a criminal trial attorney, her mother was manager of the law office, and she and her two siblings all worked there. Now a Law Society of Upper Canada Bencher, her father sits on committees to oversee ethics, lawyer funds and disbarments. He remains one of the three most influential people in Topp’s life. The second, her great uncle, was an attorney and physician who spent the bulk of his career as a pathologist at the University of Virginia. Finally, David Scott, a prestigious Canadian lawyer who worked on a case with her father, made quite an impression on her as well. Not surprisingly, Topp’s brother is a lawyer with his own criminal law practice in Windsor, Ontario.


Wendy Lloyd

Program participant Wendy Lloyd was born in British Columbia and moved to Toronto with her mother and two brothers when she was 10, following her parents’ divorce. The only one of her parents’ children to attend college, she graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa with a bachelor’s degree in law and sociology.

Lloyd’s interest is in international trade and investment law, and with companies whose holdings cross borders. Practicing in the U.S. was always in her mind, and more than anything she’s thankful that the program has opened the door to that reality. Lloyd, whose Canadian tuition covers the cost of both degrees, admits, “It’s just such an opportunity for someone who is on student loans.” With limited financial resources, she doubts she would have been able to pursue a law degree in the U.S. otherwise.

The most important thing to Lloyd is how well she’ll serve her clients as a result of the program. After graduation, she plans to spend a year with a Canadian law firm doing the mandatory “articling,” a kind of graduate internship. “Every major law firm offers a different articling program,” Lloyd said. Students are able to choose one in their area of interest and are usually hired by that firm. She’d like to complete her articling with a law firm that has offices in Toronto and the U.S., and practice in Toronto for a couple of years before transferring to the firm’s U.S. office.


Nadia Campion

Nadia Campion, the third student in MSU-DCL’s JD-LLB program, feels the University of Ottawa chose those who were excited about the opportunity and would represent the school well. Campion seems a perfect candidate. She’s a graduate of the private Toronto French School where she earned an International Baccalaureate and consequently was allowed to skip her first year at university. Campion was exposed to provincial politics from an early age, and her interests grew from her father’s work as a former president of the Conservative Party and former employee of the Premier’s office. That influence, paired with her own interests, were the impetus behind the bachelor’s degree she received in political science from McGill University in Montreal.

Focused on working in international trade and investment law, Campion believes that the JD-LLB program puts her in a different class from other law students who have one law degree from one country. “It gives you a better understanding of the law because of the point of comparison,” she noted. “There are a lot of similarities but also a lot of subtleties in the laws in both countries. You gain a better understanding, which helps you be better able to assess a cross-border client’s issues.”

The fondest memory Campion has to date as a student enrolled in the program is from her first day at MSU-DCL. In a speech to first-year law students, Dean Terence Blackburn publicly acknowledged the first three participants of the program and warmly welcomed them to the law school, which “really set the tone for the rest of the year.”

All three students recognize that, since many law firms represent companies with offices in other countries, their participation in the program will give them a distinct advantage in their law careers—on either side of the border.