Call To The Bar Ontario 2023

Call To The Bar Dates

Prospective call candidates will be sent a call to the bar information bulletin in their online account 4 to 8 weeks prior to their call to the bar Ontario 2023.

 

Location Date Venue Time
Toronto

Monday, March 6, 2023

Roy Thomson Hall

9:30 am
Ottawa

Wednesday June 14, 2023

Shaw Centre 10:00 am
London

Monday, June 19, 2023

RBC Place London 2:30 pm
Toronto

Friday, June 23, 2023

Roy Thomson Hall

9:30 am / 2:30 pm

Toronto

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Roy Thomson Hall

9:30 am / 2:30 pm

 

Call To The Bar Attendance

All eligible candidates must be in attendance for an in-person call to the bar ceremony. At the call, candidates are presented with the Degree of Barrister-at-Law by the Law Society and a Court Certificate of Qualification and are required to swear or affirm the oath required to practise law in Ontario. Candidates may also take an oath of allegiance which is optional.

Following the conclusion of the in-person call, the newly called members of the Ontario Bar are entitled to practise law in Ontario, subject to the rules and regulations set out and enforced by the Law Society in its regulatory role, to ensure the competence of the profession.

Candidates who are being administratively called are not required to attend in person and do not have a ceremony component to the call process. Instead, all requirements and forms will be sent to those candidates through their online account and are expected to be filed with Licensing and Accreditation electronically by the required deadline.

Once the required call documents are submitted by the candidate, Licensing and Accreditation staff will review these documents and the candidate’s file in order to verify and process the information. During peak licensing periods, this may take three to six weeks to complete from the time a candidate submits their call documents.

Once licensed, administratively called candidates will be notified through their online account  that they have been licensed and can commence practising Ontario law, subject to the rules and regulations set out and enforced by the Law Society of Ontario.

Once notified of their licensure, candidates may still practise once they obtain their licensee number from the public directory, even if they have not yet received their printed certificate.

Call To The Bar 2022

Call to the Bar Location / Dates

Location Date Venue Time
London

Monday, June 13, 2022

RBC Place London

2:30pm
Ottawa

Thursday, June 16, 2022

Shaw Centre

10:00am
Toronto

Monday, June 6, 2022

Roy Thomson Hall

9:30am / 2:30pm

Toronto

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Roy Thomson Hall

9:30am / 2:30pm

Toronto
 

Monday, June 27, 2022

Roy Thomson Hall

9:30am / 2:30pm

Toronto
 

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Roy Thomson Hall

9:30am

Call to the Bar Information Bulletin

Prospective call candidates will be sent a Call to the Bar Information Bulletin in their online account prior to their call. Candidates will be sent a bulletin several weeks prior to the anticipated call date.

Attendance

All eligible candidates must be in attendance for an in-person call to the bar ceremony. At the call, candidates are presented with the Degree of Barrister-at-Law by the Law Society and a Court Certificate of Qualification and are required to swear or affirm the oath required to practise law in Ontario. Candidates may also take an oath of allegiance.

The oaths can be accessed on the Law Society website (By-Law 4, sections 21(1) and 22 (optional)).
Following the conclusion of the in-person call, the newly called members of the Ontario Bar are entitled to practise law in Ontario, subject to the rules and regulations set out and enforced by the Law Society in its regulatory role, to ensure the competence of the profession.

Candidates who are being administratively called are not required to attend in person. Candidates who are being administratively called do not have a ceremony component to the call process. Instead, all requirements and forms will be sent to candidates through their online account and are expected to be filed with Licensing and Accreditation electronically by the required deadlines. Once the required call documents are submitted by the candidate, Licensing and Accreditation staff will review these documents and the candidate file in order to verify and process the information. During peak licensing periods, this may take three to six weeks to complete from the time a candidate submits their call documents.

 Once licensed, administratively called candidates will be notified through their online account and can commence practising Ontario law, subject to the rules and regulations set out and enforced by the Law Society in its regulatory role, to ensure the competence of the profession.

New Member Information

Newly called members, those who attend a live ceremony or administratively called, will be sent new member information electronically through their online account approximately 5 business days after licensure. Any further inquiries should be directed to the Membership department post-call.

Legal Attire In Alberta

Once you have successfully completed your Bar admission requirements (the required articling term and the CPLED program) or your transfer application has been approved, please complete the following steps in order to schedule your Bar Call and submit your application to enrol as a member of the Law Society.

Schedule your Bar Call directly with the courts

Schedule your Bar Call ceremony directly with the court. Your ceremony date needs to be a minimum of 30 days after the completion of your articling term (to clarify, this means 30 days after the last day of your articles) or following the approval of your transfer application. The Law Society requires 30 calendar days to process your application. This means your ceremony date also needs to be at least 30 days after the submission of a complete enrolment application to the Law Society.

Notify the Law Society of your Bar Call date

Once you have confirmation from the courthouse where you have scheduled your Bar Call, notify the Law Society immediately by completing one of the options below:

Online applicant requirements

If you applied for student-at-law status online, on or after April 1, 2019, you must complete the Call Ceremony Notification in the Lawyer Portal. You can then track and manage the required steps to complete the application online.

Submit your enrolment application to the Law Society

The final step is to submit your enrolment application to the Law Society. The Law Society requires 30 days to process your complete application at which time the invoices for enrolment will be available in your Lawyer Portal. Please note that your application is not considered complete until all requirements on the checklist in your Lawyer Portal have been submitted. Please only schedule your Bar Call date 30 days after you submit a complete application to the Law Society; failing to do so may result in having to reschedule your Bar Call. Once your enrolment invoices have been generated, online payment will be due 10 business days prior to your Call date. Please note if you are looking for work and are not employed, you may skip the Business Location section of the checklist.

While a typical application takes approximately 30 days to review, if an enhanced consideration of good character is required, this will impact the time it takes to review your application. An enhanced review of good character may include an investigation and/or a good character hearing. Please note that students-at-law cannot apply for enrolment if they have open complaints.

Below are the requirements to complete your application, depending on whether you applied for student-at-law status using the online application process introduced in April 2019 or previously with a paper-based application. Once the below requirements have been submitted, your application will be reviewed and membership staff will be in touch regarding the next steps.

Online applicant requirements

  • Enrolment Application
  • Lawyer Status
  • Business Location (not required if you will be non-practicing, unemployed or seeking employment)
  • Official Law School Transcript (if not previously submitted) must be contained in an original sealed envelope from the University or emailed directly to the Law Society
  • Fees: The applicable invoice for membership and indemnity fees based on the information you provided on your Call Ceremony Notification will be available in the Lawyer Portal. Payment must be received prior to your application being reviewed. You will be notified once invoices are available on your Lawyer Portal.

Paper applicant requirements

Canadian lawyer transfer requirements

Once your Application to Transfer is approved, you may proceed to book your Bar Call directly with the courts as per the instructions above in Step 1. After you have scheduled your call ceremony, submit the following to Membership:

Alberta Call To The Bar Packages

Men Women

Legal Attire In Early 2000’s

In the seventeenth century, it became customary for people in legal and judicial communities to wear legal attire. The styles put into place back then have persisted today with slight modifications. For example, collars and sleeves are no longer popularly worn like they were centuries ago but rather according to what is fashionable at any given time which was shown by monarchical taste within a specific era of history as well as society’s more general sense of fashion trends that change over time – all while still maintaining its original purpose: To appear professional during important meetings or events where respectability matters most. In Britain, judges and court clerks are required to wear black silk or stuff gowns over suits. These complex dress codes have existed for centuries in order to maintain a sense of decorum within the courtroom. There is a new fashion in the courtroom. Judges are wearing more black robes than they have since before their time became monotonous and procedural. The high court, district courts, or circuit courts all prescribe to some degree that judges wear them throughout proceedings for maximum effect on observers.

Judges are called to add or remove cuffs, scarves, mantles and hoods of varying color and fabric at different time. The colors denote what type of case the judge presides over red for criminal cases, black for civil suits, green in springtime when nature is beginning to grow again (as a symbol that life goes on), grey during winter months as it typically remains cold outside with little hope left after days pass without snow melting away

More frequently judges wear colored robes which represent the court they will be presiding over. Scarlet robes remain reserved only for ceremonial occasions such as high-court criminal trials held during winter because their meaning represents justice via blood spilled between two people who have committed murder so there’s no turning back from this. Judges often forgo their robes and wigs due to weather or other special circumstances, such as when they are hearing a case involving children. In court, barristers must wear black silk gowns with tie-wigs connected by bands of rank.

Wigs and robes are reserved for British judges. These men wear wigs while they preside in a courtroom setting, but solicitors and lower court officials do not need to worry about it because their main place of employment is out on the street. The job description may have changed over time since Justices of Peace now only exist as an honorific title conferred upon certain magistrates or senior members of the judiciary with limited powers; these positions were at one point occupied by people who wore special dress such as a wig when performing their duties, so there’s some evidence that this was once required legal attire before it became more ceremonial than anything else.

The Judicial Attire

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, medieval European judicial attire was as varied as it is today. However, ecclesiastical costume history showed that there were some general similarities in basic legal attire between nations: such items might include a wide-brimmed black hat with tails to cover one’s head; long boots for riding (though not always); or even grand ducal robes when on circuit through other countries.Judges of the early modern period wore sleeved tunics, and over this, wide-sleeved pleated gowns or robes made from cloth, wool or silk. This garment was sometimes referred to as a supertunica; high judges might wear tabards instead.

Judges in medieval times often had no formal dress code so they typically found themselves wearing what were called “supertunicas”. These garments consisted primarily of long coats worn by monks that later became more popular for all kinds of official purposes such as judging sessions on court days. Sometimes these would be seen with sleeves but most often without them which meant you could see their undershirt underneath – similar to how some people today may need an extra layer during cold winter months. Judges used to wear closed mantles that cover the shoulders and a hood of matching fabric lined with miniver. Their ceremonial cloak was called an armelausa, which is also known as a manteau in France.

Despite the abundance of information on judicial attire, there was little uniformity in color. James Robinson Planché summarized this point well in his Cyclopædia of Costume: “Unfortunately, descriptions are not so clear as they are copious”. Royalty often took a liking to dressing judges in elaborately decorated garments. Colors were used as a way of representing rank, and scarlet reds would be reserved for presiding judges while lower ranking officials wore the less ostentatious hues like pink or violets. The Justices of the Peace were in a constant fight with those that would break the king’s laws. They often wore legal attire, which was appropriate for their middle-class rank and class to make sure they could blend into any village or town without being noticed right away as an outsider.

The head always needs to be covered, and in early modern times it was common for judges to wear a coif along with other articles of clothing that signified their status as educated members of society. The judge’s attire could include white lawn or silk caps on the top of his/her head which resembled academic dress worn by those who possessed doctorate degrees at this time period. The Order of the Coif was a group who ranked as “high-ranking” and were in charge of appointing judges across Europe. Judges often wore hats on top their caps, so they would not lose it during court proceedings.