The National Requirement Review: A letter to the Federation of Canadian Law Societies
In response to a call issued September 22, 2022, CALT has submitted a letter to the Federation of Canadian Law Societies about the upcoming National Requirement Review. The text of the letter is in this post below the break or you can find a .pdf file here.
In brief, we expressed concern about process and substance. We suggested that it was necessary that the review be "meaningfully collaborative, adequately evidence-based and aimed at generating consensus among key stakeholders". We also noted three substantive points:
1. with the exception of the need to integrate the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, any effort to expand the breadth, depth or specificity of the competencies that are currently articulated in the National Requirement as mandatory criteria for approved Canadian law degrees ought to be framed as an effort to articulate supplementary guidelines, rather than added requirements
2. the National Requirement review must embrace an approach to articulating competencies appropriate to ‘whole lawyers’, to ‘diverse professional practise contexts’ and for the ‘whole continuum’ of legal education and competence development, thus rejecting the undesirably narrow, ‘technical’ and ‘one-size-fits-all’ vision of competence for legal education and legal practise that was articulated in the initial work of the NCA Assessment Modernization Committee
3. the National Requirement review must not pre-emptively or prematurely adopt starting ideas that lack evidence-based credibility or that have not been subjected to appropriate critical assessment.
The letter, below the jump, explains the concerns and considerations underlying these positions.
The thoughts of our members about this upcoming review and how ACPD-CALT should engage are very welcome - you can contact us at [email protected].
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