Having both graduated from the Section this spring, Béatrice Dufresne and Rose Présumé secured clerkships at the Quebec Court of Appeal in 2027.
Learn more about the achievements of three other graduates pursuing studies at Oxford, Cambridge and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the first article of our series on the journeys of our alumni.
Béatrice Dufresne (LL.L., 2026)
"From the moment I started law school, I knew I wanted to work with the judiciary," says Béatrice Dufresne. "On the side of the law that makes the decisions."
What motivates her above all is the idea of witnessing the creation of law and the development of jurisprudence.
The former president of the Civil Law Students' Association at the University of Ottawa (AED) will complete the Quebec Bar School and the Bar Legal Clinic before beginning her clerkship in the summer of 2027.
Béatrice Dufresne is especially interested in constitutional and administrative law. "I love the idea of working on legal questions that will necessarily have an impact on individual litigants, but also on society as a whole," she explains.
Having also studied health sciences, she also appreciates the "more mechanical" side of evidence law and civil procedure.
Her years at the Civil Law Section were very formative, she notes. She points to her involvement in the AED and numerous committees, her two turns competing in the Laskin moot court competition, and her research mandates with Professors Jennifer Quaid and Pascale Cornut-St-Pierre. "The Section taught me the importance of leadership, critical thinking and initiative," she says.
Rose Présumé (LL.L., 2024; J.D., 2026)
Rose Présumé remembers very clearly the moment she received a call from a blocked number confirming her hiring at the Court of Appeal. "It was a whirlwind," she recalls. "I was very happy, but above all it was a relief, after all the stress of the process."
Clerking for the judiciary had long been a goal. She wanted to see what "the other side is like, when you’re on the receiving end of the arguments," she explains.
Her experiences at the Faculty of Law prepared her well for the Court of Appeal, she says. Her work as a research assistant to Professor Mariève Lacroix for the drafting of RESPO. Un précis contributed significantly to her research methodology. Her thoroughness and attention to detail were also refined during her assistantship at the Revue générale de droit, where she was exposed to various areas of legal research.
After the Court of Appeal, Rose Présumé wants to become a law clerk at the Supreme Court. "I'm looking for opportunities to redefine the law," she says. In the longer term, she is interested in foreign investment law — a field she discovered through the Foreign Direct Investment Moot, a competition that took her to Berlin.
"The most important thing for me is to build a practice that reflects who I am," she concludes.