ProfReader

This whole slacking off in 3L thing is blown out of proportion. Most 3Ls are still attending the majority of their classes at every university that I've taught at/attended (which is around 1/3 of the Canadian common law schools in several different provinces). I think that people think it makes them sound cool/smart if they act like they don't care and/or they think it sends the message that they are so smart that they don't need class.

Those examples are crying out for some commas. I'm less familiar with pleadings, but there's no convention of the sort in textbooks. You must've just run into one or two where it was not the author's preference. I've written textbooks and many chapters in textbooks and there is no such convention there. I use as many commas as I see fit, which is a lot.

Yes people have experienced similar things. Generally they seem to get in touch with the referee. Often those people are annoying and bother the referees too much in the days leading up to the Nov 1 deadline. In your case, you arguably weren't annoying enough. Email him again with "urgent" in the subject. Emphasize that it is fine if he reuses the same letter as last year, but that they require it submitted again. Ensure that he received the email from the UofC. Whether this will affect your chances likely depends on what else is in your file (in terms of GPA, LSAT, etc.), but given that Calgary is holistic, they probably care more about receiving these letters than some other schools, so you do need to get on this. I might even consider lining someone else up as a backup.

Define "several times". Explain the timeline of when you have contacted your referee and what you said at the time of those contacts. No one can give you any advice without any information.

I completely agree. Probably many Canadian schools, since Melbourne isn't some sort of dustbag place that will let anyone in. I feel like the term "dustbag" hasn't been used enough since its origins long ago on this site.

Bond and Melbourne aren't even remotely similar. No, to my knowledge, Melbourne is not doing this. While Bond may be motivated by the prospect of higher tuition to have a two track admission system, I strongly believe that Melbourne wouldn't want to or need to take a hit to their rankings (since admission standards are generally a significant factor in rankings) or reputation in order to generate some additional tuition. But this is all beside the point...OP, you need to decide where you want to live before making any other decisions.

Melboune is an excellent school. I (and probably various rankings as well) wouldn't have them much far behind very well regarded schools like Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford. However, as I think the comments of some of the other posters exemplify, this isn't widely known. The other universities I mentioned are widely recognized as being prestigious, whereas many prospective employers in Canada (or elsewhere) may not know that Melbourne is an excellent school. They may lump you in with people who went abroad for very different reasons. Do I think that Melbourne is arguably a better school than any Canadian school? Yes. And I think various rankings would support this. However, Melbourne is much worse than Canadian schools if you want to practice law in Canada. That being said, you suggest that you may not have a plan to come back to Canada. If you want to live in Australia then yes, by all means, go to Melbourne. If you want to live in another country, then I would definitely consider going to school there. In short, you need to decide where you plan to live before you pick a law school.

Which T30s?

When I was on the admissions committee at a law school that evaluated at least some of its applications in a holistic way, I was very biased against students who had taken courses at Athabasca University solely to upgrade their marks. Beyond that, I was fine with grades from any reasonable institution.

You certainly make some reasonable points in here, but given that you don't seem capable of discussing them in a reasonable way, I'm just going to leave this alone.

Yeah, we talked about moving the break for law students to align with the recruit, but the university wanted all students (law and other undergrads) to have the same break.

I'm not sure which school you go to, but one school that I worked at toyed with this idea but was told no by central admin. For administrative reasons, they wanted all students to have the same break.

This isn't necessarily as simple as it sounds. Sure, if you are at a school where everyone is applying to the same legal market and it is a quick recruit, then they could avoid scheduling exams during that time. But that isn't going to be the case at every school. Some recruits are very, very drawn out and they can't just not schedule anything for weeks. Some schools are supplying students to different legal markets that do their recruits at different times, which would also be very difficult from a scheduling perspective. But what you seem to be suggesting isn't broader scheduling issues but rather accommodating students on a case-by-case basis. It would be a logistical nightmare to do makeup midterm exams for everyone missing things due to recruitment. And allowing certain people to skip the midterm and have a 100% final would not be fair to other students and may actually be against faculty regulations. I also can't imagine administering such a system...Does coffee with a current articling student qualify? Or does it have to be an actual interview? Do you only get accommodations if that was the only interview slot they offered you? Or would you get accommodations if you chose an interview slot during an exam? What about cities where firms don't interview students over a short period of time? Can you get accommodations anytime during the year? While I do understand what you mean by accommodating missed exams, I don't know what you mean by accommodating missed classes. What would you propose that schools do there?

Seriously? These things take time. Committees (who are comprised of people who have many other things to do) have to meet. Depending on the process your school uses, files have to be scanned into an electronic system, OLSAS has to send materials to schools, etc. Even people who are automatically admitted based on their stats often take some time and with access candidates, the wait is often much longer.

These people generally have no idea. What candidates on this site often claim are strong ECs are only average. There are a ton of threads on this topic. Your ECs are probably a bit below average (based on the level of detail you give here), but there's not that much that can be done about it now, so there's no sense in stressing. That being said, at least the cooking contest is interesting. Most people have very boring, very standard ECs. I also think the cooking contest will serve you well as fodder for discussion when you are applying for law jobs. As for letters of recommendation, people almost never have any way to tell. They seem to assume that letters are strong if they know the referees well, which definitely isn't an unreasonable assumption, but is certainly not universally true. Applicants also often seem to assume that strong letters mean that the referee is prominent, despite me trying to quash that belief dozens of times on this site. It sounds like you did the best that you could in the referee department, given the limited amount of control that you have over that part of the process. But, subject to limited exceptions (e.g. you are applying access), none of this matters much anyway.