Law Society of Nunavut

Notes on Preparing for the Admissions Examination

Students-at-law applying for admission to the Law Society, under sections 41(2) or 48(c) of the Rules, are required to write an admissions examination along with barristers applying for membership under sections 53(3), 71(2) and 39(2) of the Rules.  Barristers transfering under the Territorial Mobility Agreement are not required to write and pass the bar admission exam to attain membership but must do some required reading of Nunavut Authorities, Statutes and Rules.

As with the practice of law, one of the key issues during the exam is time pressure, so we encourage applicants to do as much as possible to familiarize themselves with all the materials beforehand.Time for the examination is three hours fifteen minutes.

A complete list of statutes and authorities for the exam is available in electronic form at:

http://www.nucj.ca/library/index.htm

The Nunavut Department of Justice Legislation Division website provides complete text of all territorial statutes and regulations. For English versions, see:

http://www.justice.gov.nu.ca/english/legislation.html

Candidates will want to be able to find quickly the table of contents of each examinable statute or authority. They will need to be familiar with the scope and purpose of each enactment to be able to judge which statute will be useful in answering questions.

The format of the exam is short-answer. Point form or even one-word answers are preferable: “Yes”, “Three” or “the Minister” plus titles of the Act and section number are perfectly acceptable answers – remember, there are no bonus marks for complete sentences.

Time management and the requirement that applicants rely on current law:

There are a number of steps candidates may employ to quickly ensure that they are relying on current legislation.

1) The Nunavut Department of Justice website includes consolidations of some, but not all, statutes up until the end of the last legislative session. We encourage candidates to use the consolidated version of these statutes wherever possible.

2) A table attached to these notesshows which Nunavut statutes have been amended since April 1999, and by which amending acts. We encourage candidates to review this table and the legislation to which it refers in detail to familiarize themselves with amendments before writing the exam. It may be useful to make notes about which sections have been affected by amendments to reduce the need to double-check during the writing of the exam.