The National Committee on Accreditation (NCA) is a standing committee of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada (FLSC) that evaluates the education credentials of students who obtained law degrees from outside of Canada. In addition, the committee also assesses the credibility and national standards of legal education received by students in a Canadian civil law program. For this, the committee conducts an NCA exam to evaluate the standard of the law degrees obtained by students in other nations. Therefore, qualifying for the NCA exam is mandatory for those students who wish to practice law in Canada.
Notably, the NCA exam is considered to be one of the most challenging exams to qualify. According to the 1999-2009 NCA statistics, only 1,708 out of 4,515 students succeeded in the examination. Thus, a thirty-eight percent of the success rate in the NCA exams indicates the extreme difficulty level. Furthermore, a student can take up to three attempts to qualify for the NCA exam, including a first attempt and two re-writes. Although, students can ask for the fourth attempt if not succeed in writing NCA exams three times, as per the NCA policies made by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.
Apart from the examination attempt numbers, aspiring students can write the exam for up to four hours maximum. If talking about the structure, the questions asked in the NCA examination are based on facts and conducted in an open-book method. Notably, an applicant can take the help of previous years’ question papers and format to understand the pattern and content of the NCA examination. But, gone are the days when last years’ question papers were sufficient in preparing for the examination. The alarming failure rate in the NCA examinations has raised a concern about the future of aspiring law practitioners in Canada.
Therefore, some leading universities in Canada help students or working professionals for the preparation of NCA examination. These universities offer preparation courses to assist students in cracking the examination successfully. The NCA exam preparation courses are tailor-made for law professionals and law graduates trained in other nations. These courses are focused on helping students meet the national standards for legal practitioners in the country. The course also prepares students for the five mandatory examinations of the NCA.
Notably, there are seven NCA exams, of which five are mandatory. These five mandatory NCA exams are Canadian Administrative Law, Canadian Constitutional Law, Canadian Criminal Law, Foundations of Canadian Law and Canadian Professional Responsibility.
How much does it cost to study an NCA examination preparation course in Canada?
Studying the NCA examination preparation course from a leading university of Canada’s Toronto will cost students around CAD 300.00. However, students can take a course online.
So ‘yes’, it will be the right choice for you if you’re considering studying the NCA exam preparation course for excelling in the examination on the first attempt only. However, practice makes a man perfect. So, aspiring law graduates need to practice more and more to qualify for the examination successfully.
