For Patricia Cavalhier, it was an opportunity she thought she’d never see again.

When the Toronto resident immigrated to Canada from Brazil with her family in 2010, she assumed that giving up her career as an accomplished lawyer was simply a sacrifice she’d have to make. Her legal background in a civil law jurisdiction like Brazil, she believed, would not translate to Canada, so she pursued a career in banking instead.

But as the family settled into their new home and she explored her options, she discovered Osgoode Professional Development’s full- and part-time Professional LLM in Canadian Common Law program for internationally trained lawyers. With her employer’s support, she enrolled as a part-time student. In 2021, she was hired as legal counsel for TV Ontario (TVO), the province’s publicly funded educational television network, and was promoted in March 2022 to TVO’s director of legal services.

It’s a happy ending that’s been repeated hundreds of times since the program’s inception in 2013. Over the past 10 years, the unique offering has helped more than 1,000 internationally trained lawyers from more than 60 countries launch or re-start their legal careers in Canada, literally changing the face of the profession.

“It’s really made a massive impact in diversifying the legal profession in Canada,” says Meghan Thomas, the director of professional graduate and international programs for OsgoodePD. “It’s good for each individual graduate, it’s good for the population-at-large because there’s access now to more diverse representation, and it’s good for the profession.”

With its full-time, part-time and distance-learning options, Canadian Common Law LLM courses are accredited by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s National Committee on Accreditation (NCA), enabling students to move on to lawyer licensing after completing their NCA requirements. While other routes to accreditation existed prior to the program’s launch, they were often too difficult or impractical for many lawyers trained outside of Canada to pursue, she noted.

“This program and its expansion over the years has really provided a lot of opportunity for people,” she adds.

The program’s success will be celebrated at a special 10^th anniversary event on Oct. 24 from 5 to 8 p.m. at OsgoodePD’s downtown Toronto campus. The gathering will give graduates from across the years a chance to reconnect, reflect and toast the fruits of their hard work.

The program originally stemmed from OsgoodePD’s Professional LLM in International Business Law program, recalls Executive Director Victoria Watkins. Established in 2009, it quickly began attracting international visa students, many of whom wanted to stay and qualify to practice in Canada.

“So we decided that we should create a program that would help people get the Canadian law courses to qualify to practice,” she says. “And that’s where it started. It basically came out of student needs.”

Osgoode Hall Law School Professor François Tanguay-Renaud, the program’s academic director, says the students’ richly varied backgrounds and perspectives make for an exceptionally stimulating classroom environment.

“People come from common law jurisdictions, civil jurisdictions and jurisdictions that vary in all sorts of ways,” he notes. “And that knowledge on the part of the students really contributes a lot to the classroom in terms of being able to situate norms and concepts in Canadian law in relation to what’s happening elsewhere in the world.”

Tanguay-Renaud says the quality of instruction is equal to Osgoode’s mainstream JD program – but is actually more advanced in some respects because the LLM students already have years of training and experience under their belts.

The result? “It really helps generate very creative thinkers and law graduates,” he says – “people who are able to deal with legal problems from more than just one perspective.”

After graduation, the varied career paths students typically follow has helped shatter the myth that career opportunities for internationally trained lawyers are limited, says Thomas. An analysis of graduates from 2015, 2017 and 2019 found that 93 per cent were licenced and were employed across the full spectrum of practice areas. Forty-nine per cent were working for solo or small firms, 12 per cent for boutique firms, 11 per cent in house, nine per cent for mid-size firms, nine per cent for the government or public sector, seven per cent for big firms, and three per cent for regulatory bodies.

“Just because you’re internationally trained doesn’t mean you don’t have access to a wide range of opportunities professionally,” says Thomas. “That was the myth that was out there – that you won’t get to choose.”

The 174 graduates from those three years had an average age of 37 and came from 43 countries. Historically, many have traced their roots to nations like India and Nigeria, which are connected to Canada through Commonwealth ties and a shared common law tradition. But in recent years, she notes, students from countries like Brazil and the Philippines have been on the rise.

The program has been purposely designed by OsgoodePD to provide the widest range of pathways to internationally trained lawyers coming from a variety of circumstances. In a partnership with the York University English Language Institute, for example, it offers the Intensive Advanced Legal English Program. Its full-time or part-time Graduate Diploma in Foundations of Canadian Law, which is described as the only program of its kind in Canada, can be an attractive option for students who want a stronger foundation in the Canadian legal system before pursuing the Canadian Common Law LLM. Through OsgoodePD, students also have access to career and wellness counselling.

“We’ve done a lot of stuff that’s really different from what other schools are doing – and in a student-focused way – because we want people to be successful in the profession,” says Thomas. “There’s no one else who has the size or range of options that we have.”

Over the past 10 years, internationally trained lawyers have become one of OsgoodePD’s core client groups. Their importance is reflected in special events like Osgoode’s Internationally Trained Lawyers’ Day, an annual event when legal employers, lawyers and law graduates from different countries – and those who may be going through the process of accreditation or licensing alone – gather to learn, share and celebrate internationally trained talent across Canada.

Going forward, Watkins says, OsgoodePD is planning to add more experiential learning opportunities to the program, with a focus on practical lawyering skills. And the introduction of several significant entrance scholarships for internationally trained lawyers in 2021 has made the full-time and part-time programs more accessible than ever. The $30,000 OsgoodePD International Entrance Award of Excellence is awarded to six students annually, and the $10,000 OsgoodePD International Entrance Award of Merit is awarded to 12 students each year.

“So we now have another pool of people that we’re drawing – people who couldn’t have otherwise afforded to come,” she adds. “It’s really been great for the program and for Osgoode. Overall, it’s a group of students who have accomplished amazing things despite formidable obstacles.”

It was a meeting of legal minds from Oxford and Osgoode.

In a special guest lecture Sept. 20, University of Oxford legal philosopher Thomas Adams and about 70 Osgoode students and faculty attending in person and online wrestled with the meaning and scope of state legitimacy.

The lively event, part of the Osgoode Speakers Series, was based on a paper by Adams titled Legitimacy and the Authority of the State.

In both his lecture and paper, Adams argued that political legitimacy is wrongly identified with the use of authoritative power because legitimacy presupposes the existence of authority. But the central concern of political legitimacy, he contended, is who may exercise authority – whereas the justified use of authority concerns how it is exercised.

“When a government is legitimate, this imposes a duty both on subjects and outsiders not to overthrow or undermine that regime for the sake of any other,” Adams told a packed audience in Osgoode’s Faculty Commons Room and his online listeners.

“But it neither justifies the existence of the wider coercive apparatus within which that government functions – that’s the state – nor, perhaps more importantly, does it render in any way justified the exercise of power by that institution. So legitimacy in this sense, I’m going to argue, is a narrow ideal but one that nonetheless has fundamental importance for the operation of the political system.”

In introducing Adams, Professor Emily Kidd White said she was heartened to see the turnout for the event and the audience’s serious interest in questions about authority and the legitimacy of the state.

“I feel these questions have a natural home here at Osgoode and at York University with our rich history of work in political and legal philosophy,” she said.

“I’m really proud of this long tradition of sharp questions and pressure-packed arguments about laws, authority and legitimacy that is still produced by our political and legal philosophers, our empiricists and our social theorists here on the faculty,” she added, “with these questions finding new urgency in work done through these halls on questions of Indigenous sovereignty.”

Adams is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow at St Catherine’s College, the largest college within Oxford. He works in the philosophy of law, with special interest in questions relating to social ontology, as well as theoretical aspects of constitutional and administrative law.

Professor Carys Craig is stepping into Osgoode’s lead research role at a time when her own scholarship is posing fundamental questions about society’s next technological shift and the future of artificial intelligence (AI).

Craig, who will serve as Osgoode’s Associate Dean (Research and Institutional Relations) over the next year, argues in a series of recent articles and presentations that the text and data mining required for artificial intelligence to produce anything could potentially clash with copyright law, significantly hampering the development of the technology or changing its direction.

“The way I see it now, copyright is the thing that could make or break AI,” she said. “The question about whether training AI involves making copies that constitute copyright infringement is an enormous issue.”

Craig, an internationally recognized intellectual property (IP) law expert who served in the same role from 2014 to 2017, said that, more than ever, the interaction of law and technology is forcing legal scholars to re-examine legal principles and concepts that may have been taken for granted – especially when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). In many areas, she added, Osgoode is at the forefront of that process.

“When you have a technology that has this paradigm-shifting capacity,” she observed, “suddenly you’re looking at the law and you’re thinking, well, we always knew, for example, what copyright laws protected when something was authored, but we didn’t really know what an author was because we hadn’t really encountered that question before.”

“We want to future-proof the law,” she added, “but we need to understand that the law will evolve and so we need to look at how technology is shaping the law, as well as the potential for the law to shape technology.”

In her role as Associate Dean (Research and Institutional Relations), Craig said she will be focused on continuing to enhance Osgoode’s vibrant research community post-pandemic, supporting its researchers, communicating their successes, and improving the public’s understanding of the importance of legal research.

Gauging the impact of research in the law may differ from other disciplines, she noted.

“We’re looking at things like the capacity to impact policy development by lawmakers,” she explained, “to have influence on decisions of the courts, as well as to be advancing the scholarly and academic conversation around the philosophies of law, the broader social goals and roles of law.”

In particular, Craig said, she will work hard to ensure that students feel that they’re an integral part of Osgoode’s research community. The law school’s curriculum aids in that by ensuring students are engaged in legal research and scholarly writing, especially with its upper-year writing requirement,  editorial opportunities with its leading law journals and the annual JD Research Symposium.

“It’s easy for them to get caught up in their studies and their deadlines and their exams and their grades, but being at Osgoode gives you a real opportunity to participate in an intellectual community,” she said. “We want to see the students here and engaged in that scholarly conversation.”

In addition to her role as an associate dean, Craig is director of IP Osgoode, which explores legal governance issues at the intersection of intellectual property (IP) and technology. She is also Editor-in-Chief of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal. A recipient of multiple teaching awards, she is often invited to share her work and expertise with academic audiences, professional organizations, policymakers and the press. Her publications are regularly cited in legal arguments and judicial opinions, including in several landmark rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Craig’s recent works on AI and copyright law include:

“Legal reform to enhance global text and data mining research: Outdated copyright laws around the world hinder research” 378(6623) SCIENCE 951-53 (2 December 2022)

“The AI-Copyright Challenge: Tech-Neutrality, Authorship, and the Public Interest” in Ryan Abbott (ed), Research Handbook on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property (Edward Elgar, 2022)

Review Essay, “The Relational Robot: A Normative Lens for AI Legal Neutrality – Reviewing Ryan Abbott, The Reasonable Robot (Cambridge University Press, 2020)” 25(1) Jerusalem Law Review 24-39 (2022).

“AI and Copyright” in Florian Martin-Bariteau & Teresa Scassa (eds), Artificial Intelligence and the Law in Canada (LexisNexis, 2021), and

“The Death of the AI Author” with Ian Kerr, 52(1) Ottawa Law Review 33-86 (2021).

Karl Furtado never expected to be at Osgoode. But as the third week of classes begins for the Mississauga, Ont. native and other members of the Class of ’26, he is still revelling in the experience.

“I’d like to say I chose Osgoode, but I feel like the truth is that they chose me,” he said. “I know how competitive the process is, so I didn’t get my hopes very high.”

Less than a month into his law studies, Furtado said, the “secret sauce” to Osgoode’s admissions process is already clearly evident.

“It puts together a very strong cohort of students with diverse and valuable life experience,” he observed. “From engineers to securities investigators, to professionals of all different backgrounds, the students all seem well positioned to make exceptional contributions to the profession.”

Osgoode’s diversity is a reflection, in part, of its unique holistic admissions policy, which takes into account more than just grades or LSAT scores when selecting students from among thousands of applicants.

Furtado, a French linguistics major, worked as a paralegal for more than 20 years before deciding to pursue his law degree. “I enjoyed advocating on behalf of disadvantaged plaintiffs as a paralegal and always thought I could do more as a lawyer,” he noted.

Jennifer Meade, a native of picturesque Hudson’s Hope, B.C., was a certified fraud examiner in the capital markets field before beginning her law school journey. In that role, she used sophisticated techniques to detect complex market abuse.

Meade said the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn. in May 2020 prompted in her a process of profound reflection about injustice in the world and the kind of impact she hoped to make in life –especially with respect to systemic racism. The pandemic only magnified that introspection.

“I had become numb to these issues after having my own painful experiences and watching family and friends face similar challenges,” she said. “A year later, I found myself applying to law schools.  I stopped looking outside of myself for an advocate and decided to become one.”

She was drawn to Osgoode, she said, by its reputation for excellence, its focus on public service and its commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion.

“Attending Osgoode is an absolute honour,” she added, “and I’m very much looking forward to receiving an exceptional legal education that I can pay forward and perhaps use to inspire others to also apply to law school.”

Torontonian Hammna Iftikhar discovered her passion for the law earlier than some classmates – as a student in York University’s Law & Society program.

“Learning about the law and its place within society taught me that law is everchanging and individuals can have an impact within society no matter their background,” she said. “As someone who is passionate about supporting her community and assisting those in need, I realized that my interests aligned within the areas of law that motivated me to pursue a career as a lawyer.”

For her, she said, the deciding factor in choosing Osgoode was it’s unparalleled and wide-ranging clinical education program.

“I found that Osgoode has a lot of experiential learning opportunities that provide wonderful hands-on experience to students, which is key when deciding to pursue a specialization,” she added. “The diverse student body and the sense of community were also encouraging factors in finding the right environment at law school.”

As Osgoode students conclude their first week of classes, the law school’s award-winning professors are looking to the academic year ahead with the same sense of excitement and anticipation.

“I believe that as an institution and a group, we have a deep respect for students’ learning and well-being,” said tax law Professor Ivan Ozai. “Faculty members at Osgoode are urged to pursue their particular research interests but are also incentivized and inspired to devote time, interest and effort to understand and accommodate every student’s needs.”

Earlier this year, Ozai, Professor Jennifer Nadler and adjunct faculty member Aubrey Kauffman received 2023 Osgoode Faculty Teaching & Service Awards, which are based on nominations from students. The 2023 service award went to Professor Janet Mosher. Ozai won in the category of full-time faculty with less than 10 years of experience, Nadler for full-time faculty with more than 10 years of service and Kauffman for adjunct faculty.

The Osgoode Professional Development Professional LLM Award was presented to Professor Poonam Puri, while OsgoodePD’s CLE Contribution Award went to Lauren Bernardi, the founder and managing partner with Toronto-based Bernardi Human Resource Law LLP. Bernardi is co-director of OsgoodePD’s certificate programs in workplace mental health law and workplace investigations. Puri, the director of OsgoodePD’s Professional LLM in Business Law program, is an internationally recognized scholar in corporate law, corporate governance and capital markets regulation.

Ozai, a former tax court judge and senior government official in Brazil who joined Osgoode in 2021, called the recognition from students “an unparalleled honour.”

“I couldn’t feel more blessed!” he said. “Teaching, for me, is a calling, and tax law is my passion. Every new academic year is a fresh start and allows us to reconsider some teaching methods and course materials.”

“What I am most passionate about teaching tax law,” he added, “is that it allows us to reflect with students on fundamental questions about what kind of society we want to – and can – have. Teaching tax law raises these questions and motivates us to think hard about how to practically achieve any desired social policy goals.”

Nadler, who was appointed a full-time faculty member in July 2017, said she feels privileged to teach 1L students and to be recognized for her teaching efforts.

“First-year students are so engaged and enthusiastic and eager to learn and it’s such a joy to be part of that,” she said. “It’s nice when they see the effort and attention you put into it and your desire to see them succeed.”

Nadler will be on sabbatical during the 2023-24 academic year and, among other things, hopes to attend law workshops in the U.K. and Berkeley, Calif. She is working with another professor on developing a course for September 2024 on the historical origins of equity law.

Kauffman, who teaches bankruptcy and insolvency law, said he likes to tell the story in his first class each year of how he met his future wife on the first day of law school. Both fared well in their studies because of their prodigious ability to memorize facts.

“But I never understood why any of this was,” confessed the Toronto-based partner with Fasken. “When I got into practice and learned more about why cases are what they are, I thought, I’d love to teach law school from the perspective of a practitioner and explain what’s really happening in a case from a business standpoint – why are people having this fight and why is a judge helping one side or the other?

“So that’s the lens through which I teach my course,” he added, “and winning this award, I feel validated in that the students like this approach and they get a lot out of it.”

Kauffman said that teaching has made him a better practicing lawyer. “Busy lawyers don’t have time to read the body of law that they practice in,” he explained. “You focus on fact-specific issues. But being able to go back each year and read and re-read the seminal Supreme Court cases has been so valuable. Every time I teach the course, I learn more of the nuance that I wasn’t aware of.”

Canada’s longest-serving Supreme Court judge urged Class of 2026 students on their first day of law school Aug. 24 to always maintain their integrity and humanity and to seek diverse experiences that provide them with the opportunity to contribute and grow.

“How you live your life is as important as what you do in your life,” said Justice Andromache Karakatsanis, a member of the Class of 1980. “So how you can enrich the community, the human connections we make and the small kindnesses are just as important as any grade you achieve.”

Justice Karakatsanis, who grew up in Toronto working in her parents’ Greek restaurant, told the students that they will quickly learn in the legal profession that their reputation is everything. And while advocacy is important, it should not be allowed to cloud their ethical standards, analytical skills or good judgment.

During a Q & A session in Osgoode’s Moot Court before an audience of 1L students, incoming dean and Professor Trevor Farrow noted that Justice Karakatsanis’s message resonated strongly with Osgoode’s distinctive emphasis on legal ethics – beginning in first year with its first-semester Ethical Lawyering in a Global Community (ELGC) course.

Appointed to the Supreme Court in 2011, Justice Karakatsanis looked back fondly on her legal education at Osgoode and especially her experience at Parkdale Community Legal Services, which she called “transformative.”

“That was one of the reasons that I came to Osgoode,” she told the students. “I grew up in an immigrant household in a warm, supportive environment,” she added. “At Parkdale, I encountered people who had not had that and it really opened my eyes. It brought home for me that the law is about helping people.”

There’s no need to have a grand plan for your law career, advised Justice Karakatsanis. “No matter what you choose to do in life, law school will serve you well,” she said. “These skills will prepare you to open your mind to the world and to become involved in your communities. Be open to opportunities that interest or challenge you.”

After law school, she related, her goal was to become a Crown attorney, but she was passed over. “I was devastated,” she recalled. “I thought my career was over before it began.

“Why do I tell you this story?” she asked. “Because when one door closes, another opens.”

As a judge with the country’s highest court, Justice Karakatsanis said some of the cases that continue to concern her most touch on issues of privacy and technology’s impact on the law.

One of Canada’s oldest law schools greeted the Class of 2026 on Aug. 24 with the return of some time-honoured traditions and the kind of welcome day that Armon Ghaeinizadeh wished he had had.

Ghaeinizadeh ’24, a co-organizer of this year’s Osgoode O (orientation) Week, Aug. 24- to Sept. 1, arrived at Osgoode in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. Many new arrivals that year attended virtually but some, like Ghaeinizadeh, ventured onto campus in person.

“We all had to stay six feet apart and were masked the entire time,” he remembered. “Even on the lawn outside at lunch, an administrator was telling us to stay distanced.

“It’s been wild to be planning this,” he added. “It’s kind of like our O-Week, too, because we didn’t get one.”

Ghaeinizadeh, who is O-Week co-chair with Daniella Mikanovsky ’25 and Grace Rao ’25, said this year’s events will all be in person. Mindful that the pandemic is not over, students have been invited to wear masks, if they wish, and are kindly asked to stay home if they’re not feeling well.

While this year’s orientation reflected Osgoode’s storied past, it was also updated to reflect 21^st century values.

“We’ve gone above and beyond to be creative in ensuring it’s more accessible and equitable and inclusive than ever and not just pub night after pub night,” said Ghaeinizadeh.

Welcome Day and O-Week traditions that have been revived include tours of old Osgoode Hall in downtown Toronto – the site today of the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Law Society of Ontario – a Lake Ontario boat cruise and the old Osgoode cheer: “Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy – oy, oy, oy!”

Divided into four sections, A through D, the incoming class will also compete during O-Week for the coveted Osgoode Cup, going head-to-head in a variety of events, including a dance off, a downtown scavenger hunt, and Island Day games on the Toronto Islands Aug. 27.

Welcome Day highlights also included a fireside chat with Supreme Court Justice and Osgoode alumna Andromache Karakatsanis and remarks by Chief R. Stacey Laforme of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Chief Laforme, whose address included two of his own poems, urged students to never forget who they aspire to be in each moment. Incoming Dean and Professor Trevor Farrow encouraged students to take care of themselves, take care of each other and to take time for fun during the hectic three years of law school.

As an advocate for people with disabilities, Angela Dittrich has always understood one basic truth: there is strength in numbers.

That’s why the 3L student and active leader with the Disability Collective of Osgoode (DisCO) is actively campaigning to create the first national organization representing law students with disabilities. The Canadian Coalition for Law Students with Disabilities (CCLSD) has so far brought together students from all 23 law schools across Canada.

“My disability advocacy work has been the most challenging and fulfilling work I have done during my law school career,” she said. “While some progress has been made, there is still a long way to go to tackle the many challenges and inequities that disabled law students and lawyers continue to face across the country.”

Dittrich, a native of Hamilton, Ont., has been diagnosed as neurodivergent and has had a variety of neurological, chronic pain, cardiac and connective tissue disorders since early childhood.

Being a disabled law student poses numerous challenges and barriers, she said. But the most frustrating challenge, she noted, is that many of these barriers could easily be eliminated through the development of equitable policies, more thoughtful planning approaches and a system that prioritizes the creation of a more diverse, inclusive profession.

In recognition of her work to improve accessibility to legal education and her academic excellence, Dittrich was awarded in July a Legal Leaders for Diversity Trust Fund Scholarship. The fund was established in 2015 to promote equal access and diversity in law schools and was created through donations from general counsel and law firm managing partners from across Canada.

During her third year in the combined Juris Doctor-Master in Environmental Studies program, Dittrich will serve as co-president of DisCO. She said she plans to build on the organization’s work in creating an important sense of community and engaging with the law school’s administration to implement key equitable policy measures.

But it was in her role as DisCO’s outreach coordinator last year that Dittrich said she saw the need for a national organization to advocate for law students with disabilities. The idea took shape during discussions with disability advocates from local law schools about advocacy strategies for COVID-related accommodations.

“I realized that our advocacy efforts would be amplified if we were working collectively and began to build this network alongside other disability advocates at Canadian law schools,” she said. “The coalition is still in its early stages of formation, and I hope for it to be fully established within the Fall 2023 term.”