How Quami Frederick Got Busted

By: Contributor · December 31, 2008 · Filed Under Diversity in Law, Law School · 1 Comment

We previously wondered how The Star discovered that Quami Frederick used a fake degree to get into Osgoode.

Yesterday, The Star revealed how they came across the information,

Frederick’s name is on a list of bogus-degree buyers compiled by U.S. Homeland Security and Secret Service agents who took down a Washington State diploma mill in 2005.

Fine, but what if she had a more common or generic name like Jane Doe? She probably would never have been cross-referenced to a law student in Canada.

And do we really want to rely on terrorist watchlists for law school admissions? Privacy concerns around the admissions process are already discouraging some potential applicants.

Osgoode has proclaimed they will tighten their admissions process to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Ontario graduates already have to go through OLSAS, which receives transcripts directly from the institutions in the province. Foreign graduates are supposed to have their education reviewed by the World Education Services. How Fredrick circumvented this last control is still unclear.

What this will probably mean is that foreign graduates, who comprise a small minority of law students, will come under greater scrutiny. Those with non-traditional names will probably attract even more attention.

If minority students or those with diverse backgrounds, including educational experiences abroad, and inadvertently excluded or discouraged through the law school admissions process it would be truly unfortunate.

On the other hand, the new Osgoode admissions criteria is supposedly planned to give greater weight personal statements, which could ensure that a rich student body is maintained.

Of greater concern are law firms like Wildeboer Dellelce, who may be reluctant to get burned a second time. Let’s hope they continue to value the importance of diversity, in all of its forms, to the success and future of their firms.

Post tags: diploma mill, osgoode hall, quami fredrick, U.S. Homeland Security, Wildeboer Dellelce, World Education Service

What I would have included on my application to Osgoode, had I known you were permitted to make things up

By: Will McNair · December 16, 2008 · Filed Under Ethics, Humour, Law School · 5 Comments

This site’s readership will be all too familiar with the rigorous process of applying to Canadian law schools, starting with the LSAT and ending (it is to be presumed) with a vetting of one’s academic and professional credentials against those of one’s fellow candidates. The most deserving students receive early confirmation of acceptance to their first-choice schools. For the rest of us, months may pass before a position is secured; unease turns to anxiety turns to panic, until we would accept an invitation to the Novgorod School of Law just to return some certainty to our lives.

But fear not, would-be law school freshmen, for there is an easier way! Third year (former) LLB candidate Quami Frederick has the secret to a stress-free application process: fabricating a significant element of your application. As previously reported here, Frederick’s artificial B.Sc. in Business Administration opened the door to Osgoode Hall and might have launched a stellar legal career, but for the investigative journalism of the Toronto Star.

I, for one, would have welcomed this alternative in late July 2007, when I was losing hope of being accepted anywhere, and was considering making a career of my summer job at the Maple Leaf Foods chicken slaughterhouse. Had I known then what I know now, my application might have looked very different:

graduated magna cum laude from the Bill Clinton President School (TM)
holds two simultaneous parliamentary seats, for Calgary Southwest and Laurier Sainte-Marie
in 2005, Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C. called me “the son [she] never had”
has two thousand Facebook friends
prepared to bequeath a substantial personal fortune to the first law school to accept
Nobel Prize nominee, 2007, for brokering landmark peace agreement between scissors and rock
autobiography The Audacity of Hope was on the New York Times Bestseller list for thirty weeks
middle name is “Osgoode Hall Law School”
can read minds

Post tags: diploma mill, Humour, Quami Frederick

Tip: Don’t Use Fake Degree to Apply to Law School

By: Contributor · December 13, 2008 · Filed Under Ethics, Law Career, Law School · 13 Comments

Okay all you eager undergrads who read our site faithfully, here is the best tip we could ever give you regarding your law school applications.

Do not, under any circumstances, try to use a fake degree to apply to law school. Chances are it will catch up with you eventually.

Quami Frederick made it all the way to her third year in Osgoode Hall before the Toronto Star found her out. She was even scheduled to article at Wilboer Dellelce next year, the firm that has no billable hours, their own building, and a gym inside the office.

She had applied to Osgoode with a B.Sc. in Business Administration from St. George’s University in Grenada. The university exists, her degree does not.

She was one of the 290 students accepted from the 2,500 that applied that year. But when your degree is fake, grade inflation probably isn’t a major issue.

Fredrick is one of many people The Star uncovered as using a degree from a diploma mill, where a fake degree is forged from a real university, or an entirely fake university is created. (No Steyn, that’s not an option for you either)

Chances are Fredrick won’t be able to finish her law degree this year given her admission was premised on a false academic background. She also probably fails to meet the values expressed on her firm’s website,

Our firm’s greatest strengths are its people and the environment of care and mutual respect that they have created for one another. It goes without saying that to be a success in the Bay Street legal world, you must possess intelligence, integrity, dedication, some common sense and you must work very hard.

The upside is that Wildeboer Dellelce probably has an opening right now if you’re your third year and looking for a place to article in Toronto.