NCA Certificate of Qualification 2026: Getting It and What’s Next

How do you get the NCA Certificate of Qualification?

Complete all your assignments. If you took law school courses, make sure the school sends your final transcripts to the NCA.
Sign in to the NCA Portal and choose Manage Yourself, then Request Certificate.
Fill in the form and click Submit.

The NCA mails a hard copy of the certificate within three to six weeks of your request.

What the certificate does and doesn’t do

Every law society in Canada’s common law jurisdictions recognizes it as the academic step before bar admission.
It isn’t a Canadian law degree, such as a Juris Doctor (J.D.).
Each law society has its own rules on how long after the certificate you can enter its bar admission process.
It doesn’t let you call yourself a lawyer. Unless you were already called to the bar elsewhere, that waits until a Canadian law society calls you.

The NCA issued 1,818 certificates in 2025/2026, compared with 2,031 the year before, according to its 2025‑2026 annual report.

Is there a bar exam in Canada after the NCA?

Not from the NCA. Its certificate doesn’t admit you to the bar: it’s what the law societies in the common law provinces and territories require for entry to their bar admission process.

The provincial and territorial law societies set the rules for admission to practise, and those rules often include articling.
With the certificate you can apply in any common law province or territory, which means everywhere except Quebec.
Questions about a law society’s bar admission process go to that law society, not the NCA.
The Canadian Centre for Professional Legal Education’s Practice Readiness Education Program (PREP) is the bar admission training for the law societies of Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Nunavut and Saskatchewan, and British Columbia from September 2026.
In Ontario, Law Society of Ontario licensing candidates can take a law practice program instead of articling, at Toronto Metropolitan University or, in French, the University of Ottawa.

NCA: Bar admissions ↗CPLED: Practice Readiness Education Program ↗