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The JD designation comes to McGill
As of 2020, graduating McGill Law students will receive a diploma bearing the JD designation, rather than the traditional LLB, along with their BCL diploma.
Graduates of a common law program at a Canadian university historically earned an LLB.
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This was the case at McGill as far back as the 1920s, when the Faculty first offered common law instruction, with 24 students obtaining an LLB between 1920 and 1926. After the National Program was established in 1968, students could obtain their first degree in three years — typically a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) — with the option of completing an additional year of studies to obtain a second degree (LLB or BCL, as the case might be). In 1999, the Faculty implemented the current transsystemic program, through which students study civil law and common law concurrently and receive two degrees, styled as BCL/LLB.
“At all points when McGill has offered a common law degree, it took up the prevailing designation at the time and conferred the diploma most recognizable in the context of the day,” Assistant Dean Brian Peebles explains. “At the turn of the century, however, that context began to shift.”
Beginning with the University of Toronto in 2001, law faculties across Canada transitioned towards granting JDs. The two other law faculties offering common law degrees in Quebec adopted the JD designation in 2011. McGill found itself the sole remaining law faculty in Canada offering an LLB for its common law degree.
Discussion about taking up the JD designation recurred at McGill for over a decade. Two referenda held by the Law Student Association indicated that nearly 70% of the student population supported the change. In a January 2019 consultation, student support for the JD designation stood at almost 9 to 1.
Meanwhile, Faculty members increasingly received queries from prospective students and recent graduates seeking confirmation that McGill’s LLB was JD-equivalent. “Alumni shared that they had encountered questions about their degrees for purposes such as salary or seniority, particularly within larger international organizations,” explains the Director of the Career Development Office, Sophie Roy-Lafleur, BCL/LLB’11. “A growing reliance on automated recruitment systems risked causing LLB holders to be overlooked for lack of a JD if the degrees were classified differently in the system,” she adds.
In response to this changing landscape, Faculty Council passed motions in April 2019 to confer a BCL and a JD to graduates of the Faculty’s integrated program, and to allow a graduate holding an LLB to request a substitute JD diploma. Quebec’s Ministry of Higher Education approved the adoption of the JD designation as of winter 2020, before authorizing retroactive requests in summer 2020.
“We’re pleased that this change will help our graduates in having their extraordinary legal education recognized in the many markets where their ambitions take them,” Dean Robert Leckey said.
