How a Professional LLM turbo-charged this lawyer’s career

When John Sorensen started as an associate in the tax group at Gowling WLG, he saw the long road ahead. “I realized pretty quickly,” he recalls, “that it would take about 10 years until I knew what I was doing.”

He didn’t want to wait that long. After all, he understood what it takes to succeed in law. “You need to offer the best advice, faster than anyone else,” says Sorensen. “If you consistently deliver the goods, more people will want to work with you. That’s how you get the support of colleagues and develop loyal clients.”

So he went looking for a shortcut to that future — and he found it in the Osgoode Professional LLM, a rigorous two-year graduate program that he could complete on a part-time basis without scaling back his practice. As a third-year associate, he signed up for the tax specialization and started to attend evening classes. Over time, as he wrote papers and received feedback from instructors, his legal work for clients sharpened. “I started to perform above my year of call. It’s like I was taking an extra dose of vitamins.”

In two years, he completed the program. Four years later, he made partner. And, shortly after that, he became the national leader of the firm’s tax group. “The LLM at Osgoode,” says Sorensen, “made an important contribution to my development as a professional.”