Brominate toluene, then separate the isomers (bleh), oxidize with permanganate to o-bromobenzoic acid, then heat with urea to give benzamide.
If benzonitrile is what you're after (as I would suspect), IIRC heating even more will eventually cause it to throw off water and become o-bromobenzonitrile.
but one needn't make ketamine with that o-halo thing anyway...
if one started with phthalic anhydride, it could bee formed into phthalimide, then hoffmann rearranged to anthranilic acid. Then you could diazotize this to o-anything benzoic acid. No isomer separation, but sounds tiresome to me.
However, anyone interested in ketamine analog research could take real advantage of this technique.