Online LRA Program

To practice real estate law in Nova Scotia, a lawyer must successfully complete the Land Registration Act Qualification Assessment. A qualified lawyer may then subscribe with Property Online. We offer the online LRA Qualification Assessment through the Canadian Centre for Professional Legal Education (CPLED) platform.

Prerequisites 

Lawyers participating in this program MUST have a working knowledge of property law and should have experience or familiarity with Property Online. The review materials provided are not meant to teach the principles of property law but to assist you in reviewing for the assessment. To support your review of the materials, if you do not have experience in Property Online, we suggest that you arrange to gain experience to see what the online system looks and feels like.

Articled clerks may not take the qualification assessment until they have passed the Bar Examination and are within two months of being admitted to the Bar. 

Registration & Cost 

Registration is open until the Friday prior to an assessment start date. The cost for this assessment is $650 plus HST. Registrants have two weeks to review the materials and one week to complete the assessment. 

The LRA Qualification Assessment can be included in your annual professional development plan.  

We offer the assessment several times throughout the year. Find the assessment dates and registration details on our events page.

Please note: We reserve the right to cancel or reschedule any course with less than five registrants. 

Passwords 

Once qualified and registered with Property Online, you are issued two passwords; a general password for searching, PDCA submissions and draft AFR submissions and a private password to be used to complete conversions/migrations of properties into the Land Registry and for the electronic submission of documents. 

The first password may be shared within your office. Do not share the private password as it is personal to you and the system’s way of knowing you have submitted a document or final Annual Firm Report (AFR).  Regulation 10.5.7 requires that you not disclose this password to anyone. The Society and Service Nova Scotia take disclosure of the private password seriously.

In addition, you may include your time participating in the LRA Qualification Assessment toward your annual CPD requirement (review  Regulation 8.3).  You may include the assessment as 8 hours of substantive legal education and skills development when creating your CPD plan.

Document Retention 

You are required to know what a foundation document related to Property Online work is and that it must be retained.  The Society strongly recommends that you set up, from the beginning, if possible, an electronic retention system for all foundation documents to become familiar with receiving and storing your search results electronically and not as paper. 

You are required to maintain all foundation documents as another practising lawyer must sign for them at the time you leave practice, including at retirement. You will encounter difficulties if you have paper foundation documents.  It is, unfortunately, too easy to fall into the trap of keeping paper if you receive or generate documents as paper, which leads to problems later.

To learn more about what constitutes a foundation document and what your retention requirements are, review our Succession Planning Guide starting around page 9 and our Foundation Document Checklist. Connect with our Legal Service Support at [email protected] for questions and assistance setting up a system that will serve you well.

LRA Resources 

For resources pertaining to the Land Registration Act, visit the Real Estate section of the Lawyers’ Insurance Association of Nova Scotia website at www.lians.ca

Under LRA Training Material, find four modules to direct your study in the following areas: 

  • Abstracting and Title Searching, 
  • the Parcel Description Certification Application, 
  • the Application for Registration, and  
  • Revision/Rectification.