Dear my friends
I am quite interested in pursuing my LLM and Doctoral Degree in Northen American universities. Frankly speaking, however,I don't know much about Canadian law schools. So far as I know, U of Toronto is one of well-recognised Canadian law schools.

Would you please suggest me how prestigeous it is in comparison with other top 20 US law schools and from international perspective.

Additionally, in what field of law does U of Toronto, Law school enjoy its leading position?

Thank you for your comments!

Cheers!

Hi,
I am looking for the answer too. Please let me know if you have found out more about the quality of the U of T law program.

Thanks,

amp

as a canadian llb graduate (though not from u of t) I can tell you that u of t has a very strong international reputation. It is arguably--in fact probably-- the best law school in canada and is very selective in its admissions process.
I think it would rank up there with some of the best tier two universities in the world. By tier two I mean unis not including oxbridge, columbia, harvard, yale, nyu, lse and maybe a few more in the tier one.

Hi,

I am a LLM student at U of T, and I can tell you that the program is excellent. The profs are very qualified, and so are the students (admission is very competitive). From what I have heard from almost everyone here, it is definitely the best law school in Canada. As a student there, I can tell the difference with other law schools where I have studied. Furthermore, there was recently an evaluation done in the US that claims that no law school in Canada approaches the quality of UofT's. From an international perspective, let's say that U of T belongs in the best 20-25 law school in the world. I agree with the precedent post that some schools (to be more precise: Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia, Stanford, NYU, Chicago, Michigan, Virginia, cambridge, Oxford, Duke, Northwestern, Cornell, Georgetown, Berkeley, UCLA and Lse) rank better than U of T, without a doubt. However, after these schools, I would place UofT without reserve. Keep in mind that many of UofT's students have been admitted to the said law schools but couldn't afford the tuition fees (38 000 US instead of 18 000 Can for international students and 6500 Can for nationals). I think you can rely on general rankings of universities to evaluate UofT's reputation; in my opinion, it rightly mirrors the reality. Consider finally that UofT is getting better every year (check the general rankings, UofT is always moving up), that they will entirely rebuild the law school, that it has the best profs/students ratio in North America with Yale (1 for 10) and that it has strong relations with top Us law schools.

Nick

I agree largely with what nick writes. the important thing to remember, however, is that rankings are always terribly artificial and, depending on the use to which you intend to put your llm, largely irrelevant.
Regarding the former, artificiality, one needs to remember that one of the major criteria affecting rankings is the supposed quality (meaning gpa) of its enetering class. Well, GPA's from law hardly reflect intelegence. I was challenged more and thought harder during mu BA than during the LLb. Law school is an exercise in exam writing and barfing out data in well organized fashion-- a skill, to be sure, but hardly indicative of intelligence, creativity, writing and research skills, advocacy, ability to meet deadlines, handle stress, deal with clients, think on your own, etc... (In the interests of disclosure, I should say that I have very good grades from both degrees, so this is a genuine statement, not a reflect of sour grapes).
Regarding the latter, utility of degree, well, here the reputation, no matter how undeserved or unbreflective of the school, probably matters a great deal in business, but less so than in, say, academia, where I think an intense thesis bases llm where thinking is actually involved would be of more value than an exam based barf fest from a top ranked school.

Toronto certainly has an excellent reputation in law. I'm personally trying to decide between McGill and Toronto. Both are excellent schools, but I think McGill has a very slight edge in terms of international reputation from what I have read and heard from lawyers abroad. There was a ranking just released where McGill was rated #21 in the world for law, and Toronto was also on the list in the high 20's.

In terms of the J.D./LL.B., I would say Toronto is definitely number one in Canada.

I don't think rankings really matter all that much among Canadian law schools (at either the jd/llb or the llm level). I know plenty of people from supposedly 'poorly' ranked canadian schools that have ended up in the top tier firms in the major markets (toronto, montreal, vancouver, calgary) in canada. And if it's academia that you're interested in, well it seems that most scholars/professors teaching at canadian law schools did their graduate work at internationally rnowned institutions (and gaining access to these inory towers hasn't been affetced by virtue of the fact that they have often graduated from 'poorly' ranked canadian schools beforehand).

That said, I still think McGill has a slightly better reputation abroad than Toronto. For academia in Canada, I do not think that it is essential to have a foreign LL.M., although it certainly doesn't hurt. If you look at Canada's leading scholars in aboriginal law, constitutional law, criminal law etc., particularly those who went to grad school in the past 20 years, many of them went to Canadian schools.

You can't really go wrong with a LL.M. from Toronto or McGill.

j..

Reputation wise, I really think it also depends on the field. Mcgill seems better at international and comparative aspects, while Toronto seems especially strong at areas such as Trade Law (Trebilcock) and Legal Theory (Dyzenhaus).

On the whole though, I do agree with the above poster. In Asia, at least, both Mcgill and UoT are considered to be roughly equivalent, reputation wise

From my experience in the UK, McGill's law program is better known than Toronto's. Interestingly, U of T requires a LL.B. B+ average to gain admission to the LL.M. programme, which is not as competitive as other schools.

With respect to arano's post, Canadian schools do not generally use the socratic method in legal instruction. This is very "American", and from what I understand even in the United States this method has declined in popularity. Only certain "old school" profs at Canadian schools use the socratic method and its usage is actively discouraged by the law departments. Even if the method was used at a particular school, a student undertaking an LL.M. program would not have much exposure to it in graduate courses, particularly where the student is in the thesis stream (which would be advisable for those planning to get into academia).

With respect to an international LL.M., I suspect that a domestic thesis-based degree would be more valuable in academia than a foreign course-based degree. Unfortunately many of the so-called prestigious foreign law schools use the LL.M. as a money maker and herd their graduate students into regular law classes and don't permit them to write a thesis.

Here is the link to the survey that I mentioned earlier, granted it is not specifically limited to the law program. McGill is ranked #21, U of T is ranked #27.

http://www.topuniversities.com/index.php?id=869


It should also be noted that McGill is the oldest law faculty in the country. The law school has produced several prime ministers and numerous Supreme Court of Canada judges (including current Supreme Court judge Justice Deschamps).

...

I guess that what you will hear about schools' reputation will depend a lot about where you live. In Quebec, it seems to me that UofT is perceived as a better law school than McGill. Last year, I had the choice of going to McGill or UofT (I was admitted to both) but I decided to go to UofT even if that involved higher tuiton and departure from home (I live in Montreal). I asked so many people what they think about those schools while I was at Quebec Bar School, and a lot of them were from McGill. Pretty much everyone agreed that U of T was better. I think McGill was better than UofT, but that this is past. Quebec's universities have big trouble to get funding because of government's policies (they cannot set tuiton too high for nationals for example). UofT law school, on the other hand, is getting better every year; they hired a bunch of profs a couple years ago, have the highest admission rate, raised tuition (from $12000 to $19000), and they are well-determined to be one of the world's leading law schools (they actually have a plan for that which was done in 2002 and revised in 2007).

However, I don't think you should take your decision about where you should go only in terms of reputation, especially if you have to decide between those two great schools. I can't even tell you if I have made a good decision to choose UofT instead of McGill, but what I have come to is that there is no bad decision to choose one school over the other; both are really nice law schools. Course curriculum is much more important. I decided to go to UofT mainly because of the courses they offer (I felt that McGill has much less courses). If you want to do comparative law, you should definitely go to McGill. Moreover, McGill's environment is in my view more dynamic (since there are international students as well as French and English-speaking students. Moreover, the civil law/common law aspect adds to that.)

As for the ranking, I'm not sure what to think about the ranking on which was post on this forum. Putting École Normale Supérieure (France), Peking University, Australian National U or National University of Singapore in the Top 20 is quite unsual... especially since they rank better than U Michigan, UCL, U Penn and UCLA...!

According to general rankings, some rankings put UofT better whereas McGill ranks better in others. For exemple, NewsWeek ranks UofT #18 while McGill is #42. These rankings, do not forget, are general ranking, and not about law schools. And, in my view, reputation matters when there is a big difference. Osgoode Hall Law School, even though it is considered to be ranked 3rd in Canada, does not have a lot of difference with UofT; Osgoode students do not have problems to find a job on Bay street. As long as I know however, McGill outclasses every other fac of law in Quebec when it comes to employment rate, as Osgoode and UofT do in Ontario.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14321230/site/newsweek/

At UofT Faculty of Law, there is a lot of discussion and interaction in class. However, it depends on which class you attend. If you take basic courses such as Securities Regulation, Business Organization, Trust, family law, etc., students will only ask questions and make some comments. However, I had courses in which students were actually giving the course by making comments and the professor was in fact leading the discussion. Courses such as Corporations, Individual and the State (we ask ourself questions about corporate theory, what corporations should be allowed to do, etc.) or Children and the Law are examples of that. Some courses give points for participation. As a general rule of thumb, in half of my class, ithere was a lot of discussion. I would say that there is a good difference between Quebec's schools (Laval, Sherbrooke, U Montréal and UQÀM, which are more modeled on French schools) and anglo-canadian schools regarding teaching style.

I do not disagree with the above poster with respect to the reputation of U of T and McGill within Canada for the LL.B. / J.D. degree. Within Canada, U of T is without a doubt the best law school for the primary law degree. It has an excellent placement rate on Bay Street. If you want to go into corporate law and get a high paying job as a Canadian, Toronto is the place to go.

However, I believe this forum was about how the graduate programs, particularly the LL.M., are perceived internationally. The above poster is only a first or second year law student in the University of Toronto's J.D. programme. I still stand by the propostion that McGill has a slightly better reputation for its LL.M. abroad than does the U of T. Perhaps the additional spending and hiring by Toronto will be reflected in the future, but that's what I feel the situation is like at present.

And one more note, in the Newsweek link posted above, CalTech and Berkeley are ranked higher than Oxford or Cambridge which seems somewhat inaccurate (not to say that they aren't great school...).

Yeah I know, general rankings in general are pretty much biased to a certain extent. I just wanted to show that it can differ a lot from one ranking to another. With regard to the opinion of students I have asked, I was making reference to their opinion regarding the LL.M. program or the school in general. And, that is true, employment rate has much more to do with the quality of the JD program. By the way, I do my LL.M. at UofT, not my J.D. I did my LL.B. in Quebec.

I don't think that international reputation per se of a university has much to do with the quality of its program, let alone the quality of the LLM program, but rather with the quality of its professors and its students in general. As far as I can tell, McGill and UofT have comparable students (especially at the LLM level) and profs.

As a matter of fact, I am not sure how to assess a master degree in comparison to a JD/LLB degree. My opinion is that it is pretty hard to evaluate a LLM degree without taking into account the JD/LLB, since it is the same professors who are teaching, students have the same facilities, etc. At U of T and at McGill (unlike Ottawa or UdeM), LLM students take only JD/LLB classes except one, which is a sort of seminar for graduate students. And, for the quality of supervision, it must be quite the same (again, it depends which field your are studying, who is your supervisor, etc.). McGill's program is longer than UofT's (3 terms instead of one academic year), which contributes to a better formation in my view (I feel that only one year is not enough ). On the other hand, UofT now begins having really good relations with heavyweight US law schools, such as Yale. Some courses and seminars are taught by leading US academics and there are many (I can tell you a lot) conferences and workshops which are given by those academics. From what I have heard from McGill's students, you do not see that as much at McGill.

At the end of the day, deciding between McGill and UofT is a very harsh task! I have been trough, and it is not a day at the beach!

By the way, for those interested, at UofT, each LLM student is matched with a J.S.D. student throughout the year. He/she provides us with feedback on our progress in our thesis, which is really helpful in addition to our supervisor's comments.

I assumed you were in the J.D. programme at U of T because you mentioned that the tuition was $19,000. This is the tuition at Toronto for the J.D., but for the LL.M, the tuition is about $5,000 (for Canadians).
The tuition at McGill for the LL.M. is almost $10,000 (for non-Quebec residents), so in fact the tuition is actually more at McGill than Toronto for the LL.M.

And one can get the LL.M. completed in 12 months at McGill by taking the third term over the summer - which makes it, in effect, the same length as the Toronto LL.M. Interestingly, McGill's LL.M. thesis is 100 pages while Toronto's is 150 pages.

Yeah it is possible to do it in the summer at McGill. However, the program is 45 credits, and thus most people do it in one year and a half (you have to take more courses than at U of T, 20 credits of courses v. 30 credits if you are in the coursework intensive LLM for exemple). At U of T, you cannot take another semester to complete your thesis (well, you can do it, but no one does it, since you have to pay an extra $3000 and you'll be like the only one to do it). For tuition, it depends where you are from. McGill's LLM for Quebec residents is $4500 whereas UofT's is $6500 (ok, not a big difference). For foreign students, UofT's LLM is $20 000 and McGill's is about $10 000 (in this case, for non-Quebec resident). However, it is true that if you are Canadian (and not from Quebec), going to McGill is more expensive, about twice the price as you said. I think that raising the JD tuition in fact benefit LLM and JSD students since, as I said earlier, we are provided with the same facilities, etc. Furthermore, JSD students, if they do not have external scholarships, well, all their tuition is paid by the Law school and they given them $15 000 per year on top of that. I am not sure they would have been able to do that without raising JD tuition.

If one is undertaking the thesis-based programme, it is the same credit requirement at McGill as Toronto.

McGill requires 45 credits for the LL.M. 30 to 33 of these credits are represented by a 100 page thesis, leaving the student to complete 12 to 15 credits. There are two required courses at 4 credits each = 8 credits. So that leaves another 4 to 7 credits left, which would be one or two courses. In sum, for the thesis programme at McGill you are required to write a 100 page thesis (33 credits) and take only three courses (4 credits each).

At Toronto, students are required to complete 24 'credit hours'. 16 of these credits are represented by a 150 page thesis, leaving the student to complete 8 more credits. There is one required course valued at 3 credits. The student therefore must undertake 5 more credits. Courses at Toronto range from 2-4 credits, and so the student must generally take two more courses. In sum, for the thesis programme at Toronto you are required to write a 150 page thesis (16 credits) and take three courses (2-4 credits each).

The point of this exercise is that comparing credits between the schools is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, particularly since McGill awards double the credits for a shorter thesis. At either school, the student will end up taking 3 courses and writing a thesis for the LL.M, but a student would end up with a 50% longer thesis at Toronto. As such, I think a thesis student could practically finish their thesis-based LL.M. at McGill even sooner than at Toronto (though three terms of residency are required).