AZgal,

               Visit http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/index.asp and go to skilled workers, print out the form and your resume, sent them along with the processing fee to canadian consultensies in Buffalo NY. Its straight forward process NO need to hire a lawyer. For your question about experience: with your masters include all your TA, GA jobs. Also you can take a test in that web site some where and get an idea of how much you can score before applying. Now it takes around little over a year for you to get your Canada Permanant resident card

Hope that helped.