finding articling as an NCA candidate

[bandithat]

Not sure how widely this has been covered before, but struggling with lots of stress about it so wanted to ask!

I'm just starting my NCAs (Canadian who went to UK school) and know I need to be searching for articling, but with no real legal connections in Canada its difficult to get connected and many places don't seem to even consider me an option. I live in a bigger city right now but have family connections in a small town and could be open to moving there if the chances of being able to article are greater. 

Any advice would be appreciated!

[Hegdis]

This is going to have to be a volume approach. You need to use every connection you can think of - hometown is a good option for you and you should explore it fully. Ask friends of friends who are in the profession. Work to make connections, however tenuous, that you can put in your cover letter.

Tailor every letter to the job you are applying for. If you are applying to a criminal defence firm it is glaringly obvious if your boilerplate letter is getting sent to civil firms because the skill sets and language are so different. No employer should get the impression that you sent out 100 identical cover letters because you haven’t even bothered to figure out what each of them do. (Firm website is a minimum; or search counsel’s name on CanLii. Or call and speak to the current student!)

And I cannot emphasize this enough, having reviewed many resumes over the years: check and recheck your spelling and have some one proof your cover letters. The majority of NCA resumes and cover letters I receive are substandard on their face: spelling mistakes, misuse of their/they’re/there, hopelessly overblown statements that ring hollow (“I plan to utilize my skill set to promote the epitome of advancement in my career endeavours henceforth” etc). The applicants often go over the usual two page limit of the resume, over-describing everything they have ever accomplished in an effort to overcome the foreign school bias. Do not do this.

Be succinct and streamline your package. No cutesy formatting. Use a normal font. Have an email address that consists of your name as you intend to use it in the profession - this is basic but applicants routinely fail to do this ( I once got a “studzboi” email address: went straight into the bin to join the various “mizzkitty” and “randomname69” applicants).

That’s the best I have got. Do all of the above and you will be in the top ten percent of NCA applicants out there.