The Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia and the Tsinghua University School of Law have concluded a ground-breaking agreement that will enable eligible students enrolled in the LLB program at Tsinghua University to spend two intensive years in the JD program at the Allard School of Law and obtain both an LLB degree from Tsinghua and a JD degree from UBC. The agreement provides a unique opportunity for the Allard School of Law to recruit from a group of students who will add to the diversity of its student body in ways that advance the law school’s global character while maintaining its high standard of academic excellence.
The agreement provides for admission of up to 5 new students from Tsinghua University each year into UBC’s JD program at the discretion of the Allard School of Law, with applications subject to a careful process of review. Eligible Tsinghua University students will arrive at UBC after successful completion of 3 years of the LLB program and will be required to fulfill all mandatory and elective curricular requirements for the UBC JD program over two winter sessions and the intervening summer session. Participating students will have a rigorous training in both civil law and common law traditions and will possess the basic qualifications to practice in both Chinese and Canadian common law jurisdictions. The terms of the agreement also ensure that graduates will be eligible under current regulations to write the New York Bar Examination in order to qualify for practice in the State of New York. Complete details are available in the 2015/16 UBC Academic Calendar and on the Allard School of Law website.
The Allard School of Law expects to receive its first cohort of students from Tsinghua University in September 2016.
Tsinghua University School of Law is one of the People’s Republic of China’s most highly regarded and ranked law schools, attracting some of the best students from within an extremely large national pool of talent, and the Allard School of Law is the only law school in North America to have developed a collaborative arrangement of this kind. The agreement was reviewed and approved by the Allard School of Law’s Faculty Council, the UBC Vancouver Senate, the UBC Council of Senates, and by the UBC Board of Governors.
The agreement complements the Allard School of Law’s other initiatives in international legal education, including its broad range of student exchange opportunities and its joint legal education agreements with the University of Hong Kong, Melbourne Law School and the University of Hawai’i.