As Canada’s capital, Ottawa has always been a city where people with diverse perspectives can gather to share ideas and learn from one another. This spirit of openness and exchange is at the heart of one of the world’s top-ranked LLM programs in international law: the University of Ottawa’s Master of Laws Concentration in International Trade and Foreign Investment Law.
uOttawa has become a central hub for the study of international trade and investment law. The University boasts the largest group of faculty members specializing in the subject within Canada, with researchers employing a broad range of methods in their field-leading work. For example, Professor Wolfgang Alschner, who holds the Hyman Soloway Chair in Business and Trade Law, heads the uOttawa Legal Technology Lab, which is introducing computational analysis to the field of international economic law, exploring innovative topics like legal text mining and the automation of legal processes. Here, Professor Alschner notes that being in Ottawa gives students unmatched access to trade policymakers and lawyers who are directly involved in arbitration cases and negotiating treaty agreements.
Professor Céline Lévesque, who teaches a course within the program that allows students to delve into the implications of real-world disputes, adds that the diversity of perspectives in this program comes not only from the many full-time professors, part-time professors and guest speakers that are involved in delivering program, but from the students themselves, who come from all over the world. With the uOttawa Faculty of Law drawing its expertise from both Civil Law and Common Law programs, and offering courses in both French and English, the learning opportunities for students are immense.
The Student Experience
Recent students comment on the unique nature of the LLM specialization in trade and investment law, and the opportunities that students have to experience what it is like to work in the field. A case studies course, for example, allows students to work on actual disputes that are currently taking place in the world, learning to do what litigators do in real-world cases. Myriad opportunities to work on academic outputs with researchers or internships with firms specializing in trade and investment law offer students the chance to experience and contribute to up-to-the-minute issues, setting them up for success in their future careers. Past students have gone on to careers in academia and as practitioners in the field of international economic law, taking the knowledge they acquire at uOttawa to venues across the world.
