Admission Requirements
General Admission Requirements
- Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD)
- Grade 12 English (C, U)
Or equivalent
Academic prerequisites for this program may be obtained free of charge through Academic Upgrading.
Applicants who do not have a high school diploma or equivalent and will have reached the age of 19 years on or before the start of the program must undergo academic testing and may be required to complete Prior Learning Assessment & Recognition (PLAR) process to demonstrate equivalency of admission requirements prior to admission into a program.
For more details, please contact the Admissions Office at 705-235-7222 or admissions@northern.on.ca.
International Admission Requirements
In addition to the general admission requirements, international students must have proof of English Proficiency and meet the requirements below.
1. Proof of Senior High School Diploma/Certificate with an equivalent Grade 12 Mathematics (50% min.) and/or Business/Commerce stream.
2. English Proficiency (we will require one of the following):
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- IELT Academic– International English Language Testing System: a minimum overall score of 6.0 must be achieved with no individual band score under 6.0; however, we will accept one band at 5.5.
If your country of citizenship has English as its official language, we may accept alternate proof of English Proficiency.
All educational documents must be submitted in English and will be dependent on the country of citizenship.
For more information, contact the international admission office directly at INTLapply@northern.on.ca
What you learn
This course will focus on the management of law office/department and office etiquette and enable students to identify and work with time management, file management, and client accounts. It will also introduce the student to legal terminology and citation, legal correspondence, and legal documents. The student will learn techniques to organize job searches, draft cover letters, and tailor resumes specifically for law firms.
Working as a successful Law Clerk for either a law firm, the government, or private industry, requires an individual to possess many skills, not the least of which is the ability to use a variety of software programs to properly draft, create, and format documentation.
This course introduces students to many of the software programs of the MS Office Suite and acts as a guide through the proper use of each program to generate accurate, ready-for-delivery documentation.
This course is designed to give the students a background of real estate terminology, an overview of the steps and procedures of a residential real estate transaction and the purpose of each stage. Emphasis is placed on the law clerk’s role and responsibilities in this process. Estates and interests, legal descriptions, liens, government controls, electronic registration and title searching are discussed and applied to the overall understanding of residential real estate law. Students create transfer, charge and discharge paper documents and access Teraview Web to conduct property and writ searches.
This course introduces students to will clauses and interpretation, intestacy, power of attorney for property, and powers of attorney for personal care. Next: estate administration and estate litigation including common forms of proof for an estate trustee, applying for a certificate of appointment, estate administration tax, asset collection, notifying and paying creditors, accounting to beneficiaries and procedures used to challenge the validity of a will.
The Legal Communications is designed to provide the law clerk student with the opportunity to improve their writing skills and to become familiar with various forms of communication required of law clerks and legal assistants. Course material will focus on improving verbal and written skills with an emphasis on spelling, grammar, listening and speaking skills. The fundamentals of writing and formatting memos and letters will also be addressed. An Academic Integrity module aims to familiarize students with plagiarism issues in an academic environment and how to avoid being a victim of academic dishonesty.
This course will introduce students to basic substantive law concepts and criminal procedures within the Canadian criminal justice system. The student will analyze the elements of an offence, classify offences and identify possible defences in criminal cases.
This course is designed to enable students to understand and practice the computer applications that are essential in the legal environment. Emphasis is placed on legal software that are used in the majority of law offices, notably software used for family law, litigation, real estate transactions, estate law and legal research.
This course will provide the student with a background in the history of family law in Ontario and an overview of marriage breakdown, spousal and child support, financial disclosure, decision making responsibility and parenting time, the Family Law Rules, separation agreements and equitable property rights.
This course will focus on legal client interviewing. The student will understand the varying issues, needs and emotions that legal clients experience and will learn which techniques should be employed with individual clients.
This course will introduce students to some of the essential features of Canada’s legal system. It will focus on the Constitution Act and the Canadian Charter of Rights.
This course will provide students with a framework within which to analyze the legal dilemmas that lawyers face. Case studies and the Law Society of Ontario’s guidelines will be used to focus on lawyer-client confidentiality and expectations, conflicts of interest, client perjury and how lawyers choose and refuse clients. This course will also examine the paralegal practice in Ontario including the paralegal governance and the ethics and professional practice a paralegal is bound by; duty to client, confidentiality and ethical advocacy.
Hands-on training in fundamental accounting concepts as applied in law firms, and using the legal industry standard of PC Law legal accounting software. Students develop an understanding of general and trust accounts, including the Law Society of Upper Canada’s requirements and the obligations related to trust accounts, preservation of client property and withdrawal of trust monies.
An overview of the civil court process in Ontario, including a civil law suit, procedures proper to the commencement of proceedings, client management and interviewing. An examination of the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedures and the Courts of Justice Act, and drafting of documents including pleadings, affidavits, motions, using the Ontario Court forms. The last part of the course will deal with the procedure and documents used in the process of: examination of discovery, overview of oral and documentary discovery, pre-trial and trial preparation and the trial procedure.
Students are introduced to Ontario and Canadian corporate law. Emphasis on its practical application in the law office setting. Students learn steps and procedures involved in common corporate transactions and the law clerk’s role and responsibilities in the process; to prepare for shareholders’ and directors’ meetings; draft annual corporate resolutions, assist with corporate reorganizations; and conduct due diligence in commercial transactions. Students learn the background for analyzing corporate management, issuance of shares, annual matters, corporate changes, reorganizations and other advanced issues. They distinguish between business and non-profit corporations and develop ability to conduct due diligence and corporate reviews.
This is a course that will focus on intentional torts including interference with economic relations and malicious prosecution along with the understanding of unintentional torts such as negligence. It will also deal with various factors that form a contract and what affects those contracts. The sale of goods legislation and the various consumer protection provisions will also be examined.
In this course the rights and responsibilities of parties, along with the procedural streams and classification of offences of the Provincial Offences Act will be covered. The students will learn practical skills to deal with a client who has been charged under the POA and to make the necessary preparations required for court, including the motions and applications process, the expectations in the courtroom. They will also analyze the workings of the POA trial, including evidence, witnesses, sentencing, reopening and appeals and become familiar with the common offences under the Highway Act and other common Acts.
Under the guidance of the Law Clerk program faculty members and their Fieldwork Placement Coordinator, students will apply and demonstrate in a real-world work setting the theories and techniques which they have learned. A 120-hour placement. Equals 1 day/week /15-weeks. No courses on Fridays to support this. While the college provides some assistance to students with their placement search, ultimate responsibility for securing a placement lies with the student.
This course will begin with a review of the stages of a real estate transaction and the scope of practice of a law clerk. The impact of dealing with condominiums, residential tenancies, rural and new homes on a transaction will be explored. It will analyze two case studies for two agreement of purchase and sales and students will conduct title searches in Teraview Training for both scenarios.The focus will then shift to opening a purchase and sale file for the case scenarios in Unity and students will create all the off-title documents that are required to complete residential real estate transactions. * Students will be using Unity software to create all the documents required and work on both a purchase and a sale file and the * Teraview Training environment to search real properties and create e-reg documents such as a transfer, charge and a discharge. Prerequisite: LC1063 Introduction to Real Estate Law
This course exposes students to the steps undertaken during the debt collection process. Topics include opening and organizing a litigation file, commencing proceedings, default judgment, and enforcement remedies at both the Superior court and Small Claims court jurisdictions. Students will create all of the necessary documents required in a litigation suit and enforcement of the judgment in both courts using the ACL software. They will also prepare a teaching lesson on one of the course topics and present it to the class.
This course will provide students an overview of the landlord and tenant process in Ontario, including both residential and commercial tenancy. An examination of landlord and tenancy law; the legal framework and how the law applies to applications and agreements; terminating agreements and processing applications under the Residential Tenancies Act. A review of the steps necessary to increase rent, reductions and rebates. A review and study of offences under the RTA, Housing Cooperatives, and an overview of the Commercial Tenancies Act and the legal obligations of a commercial landlord.
This course provides fundamental and practical understanding of the key legal issues that arise between employers and non-unionized employees. The course provides students with the substantive and procedural knowledge needed to help those facing challenges in the workplace. Students address both common law and legislation and review the statutory enforcement powers available to the Ministry of Labour as well as the prosecution and defence of quasi-criminal regulatory offences in provincial offences court.
This course will provide those students who have gained basic knowledge of legal communications with a detailed analysis of advanced legal research and writing techniques and styles. The student will learn to identify legal issues and determine the correct research tools, in both paper and computerized format, to analyze and understand those issues. The student will develop the ability to locate, read and analyze legislation, regulations and case law and to draft legal memoranda.