Legal Education in China: Reforms and Requirements

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weidong JI
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Developmental Trend ◽  
Practical Skills ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Chinese Law ◽  
Tuition And Fees ◽  
Education In China

AbstractThis article argues that two types of pressure, specifically pressure from international competition and pressure resulting from the low employment rate of law graduates, are the major motivations for the new wave of legal education reforms in China. The direction of the reforms is from a single model into more diversified models. However, there is tension between “the universities’ pursuit of academic freedom and featured education” and “the government’s focal investment associated with deliberation and calculation.” In recent years, Chinese legal education reform has placed more and more emphasis on practical skills training, and Chinese law schools are now required to open legal practice courses that must make up no less than 15% of the curricula. The author thinks this developmental trend is correct, but points to a potential problem: the costs of practical skills training, historically borne by mostly courts, procuratorates, and law firms, are now being transferred to law schools. Therefore, reform of the legal education sector in China should be adopted together with reforms in the tuition and fees system, as well as the bar exam, so that planned changes can be applied outside of the academic sector.

Methodological foundations of legal education reform in Ukraine: Scientific paradigm and modern context

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-122
Author(s):  
Oleksii O. Kot ◽  
Nadiia V. Milovska ◽  
Leonid V. Yefimenko
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Training System ◽  
The State ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Practical Training ◽  
Practical Skills ◽  
Foreign Experience

The study investigates the current state and defines the methodological foundations for improving the practical training of lawyers in the context of reforming legal education by establishing the features of legal regulation of legal education and its role in the state system, identifying the main problems of modern legal education, as well as analysing foreign experience in practical training of specialists in the field of law. The study uses general scientific and special legal methods of scientific cognition, including comparative legal, philosophical and functional methods, dialectical and formal legal methods of cognition, method of analysis and synthesis. The paper established that the professional training of future specialists in the field of law is currently described by a disparity between the theoretical knowledge and practical skills of law graduates, which complicates their adaptation to practical work. The authors of this study proved that the reform of the legal training system through increasing its practical orientation, determining the state needs of legal personnel of various educational levels, internationalisation of higher education, introduction of new specialisations in accordance with the needs of various spheres of legal practice, should become the basis for the development of legal education in Ukraine. Attention was focused on the need to optimise the system of training legal personnel mainly through the introduction of new teaching methods, the approval of new educational standards, considering the corresponding progressive foreign experience in this field, provided that the accumulated experience, traditions, and principles of Ukrainian higher legal education are preserved, thereby ensuring the development of future specialists with stable practical skills of law enforcement activities. It was found that in the context of the reform of legal education, it is important to establish such requirements for the educational process that would ensure that students master not only a minimum amount of knowledge, but also practical skills because practical training of students is a mandatory component of the educational and professional programme for obtaining an educational degree. In particular, it is necessary to reorient the content and orientation of educational works of applicants for legal education, which should be focused not only on repeating or reproducing theoretical material, but also on solving specially developed practical situations. The issue of increasing the duration of internships and effective cooperation between educational institutions and employers is also important. Improving the effectiveness of training specialists in the field of law through a proportional ratio of theoretical and practical content of the educational process in legal specialities is aimed at modernising the higher legal education model in Ukraine

Problems of Legal Education Reform in Ukraine

2020 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 70-77
Author(s):  
Maria Bilak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Education System ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Approaches To Teaching ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
New Model ◽  
Main Ideas

The paper attempts to study the current situation of legal education reform in Ukraine. The main ideas of the new model of legal education in Ukraine were analyzed. The author made a comparison of Ukrainian legal education system with legal educations practices in United States, Poland and Germany. The main problems negatively influencing the quality of legal education such as corruption, disproportionally high number of law schools and outdated approaches to teaching were described.

scholarly journals LEGAL EDUCATION IN INDIA: PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
B. C. Nirmal
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Learning Needs ◽  
Legal Service ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Service Market ◽  
Education In India ◽  
Induced Changes

This article makes some observations about legal education in India by locating it within a wider context of legal education reform that is taking place in Law Schools across the world in the wake of globalizationled and globalization-induced changes in the nature and needs of legal profession. For being both intellectually challenging and professionally relevant, legal education should be more responsible than ever before to the legal needs of the community national as well as international , and the learning needs of students to become professionally competent to play their role in an increasingly transnationalized legal service market. Any effort to restructure and reorient legal education to attain these goals will be an uphill task for any school. This article begins with exploring the implications of globalization for legal education and then turns to nature, aims and objectives of legal education. The article then looks at the possible changes required to be made in the existing curriculum for undergraduate law students in order to make the legal education more relevant and meaningful for its consumers. The focus then shifts to issues concerning methods of teaching, clinical experience and assessment of students. This article then considers issues arising from the proposal of the Bar Council of India to reduce the period of Masters programme and then builds a strong case for strengthening a research tradition in Law Schools. The focus then shifts to measures that are necessary to attract and retain better faculty and also to the regulatory role of the Bar Council of India in the field of legal education. The article concludes with some reflections on the promise of a different vision of legal education.

scholarly journals Legal Education Reform and the Good Lawyer

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 801 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Woolley
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Professional Identity ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Cautionary Note ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Large Lecture ◽  
Essential Function

The critics agree: law schools do it wrong. Stuck in early twentieth century practices that emphasize instruction in legal doctrine in large lecture halls, law schools fail to provide their students with the skills necessary to be practicing lawyers and to be marketable to prospective employers. They fail to instill in their students the “professional identity” necessary to achieve ethical legal practice. This article sounds a cautionary note with respect to those proposals for reform that reject the traditional emphasis on doctrinal teaching. In particular, and in contrast to the critics who view doctrinal learning as inconsistent with, or unrelated to, the creation of ethical lawyers, this article suggests that the emphasis on law in law school serves an essential function in creating ethical legal practice.

scholarly journals The University Library: A Driving Force for Reform in Legal Education?†

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Beljaars ◽  
René Winter
Keyword(s):  
Legal Education ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Library Education ◽  
University Library ◽  
Information Skills ◽  
The University

AbstractInformation skills training offers opportunities for gradually embedding changes in legal education programs and to bring about the integration of legal knowledge, skills and experience. If shared goals are formulated in a spirit of close collaboration, curricular changes and revisions will potentially have a greater effect and be more likely to enhance long-term programs. The university library can serve as an ideal base for the use of information technology such as web portals and content integrated search engines, which in turn will help refocus attention on the use of library facilities. The harmonization and maintenance of this apparatus, however, requires both a new form of cooperation and a re-interpretation of the legal education curriculum. This article compares several library developments which could prove important for legal education from a Dutch perspective, and also examines library education in the law schools of the United States of America.

scholarly journals Legal Education Reform Pursuits in Ethiopia: Attainments and Challenges (2006-2019)

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-283
Author(s):  
Elias N. Stebek
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Quality Standards ◽  
Law School ◽  
Course Delivery ◽  
Exit Exam ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
School Autonomy ◽  
Reform Programme ◽  
Key Terms

This article examines attainments and challenges in the pursuits of legal education reform launched in 2006. Achievements and challenges in LL.B programmes are examined based on the standards of the legal education reform programme relating to admission of students to law schools, staff profile, standards of reform relating to curriculum, course delivery, assessment, law school autonomy, research, publications, quality assessment and the requisite resources thereof. There are commendable achievements such as raising the duration of legal education from four to five years, the introduction of LL.B exit exam, and the preparation of a significant number of teaching materials. However, the data, documents and literature discussed and analyzed in this article indicate that the level of quality and standards in Ethiopia’s legal education stand below most of the thresholds that were envisaged in the 2006 Legal Education Reform Programme. Key terms Legal education reform · Quality · Standards · LL.B programmes · Ethiopia

Legal Education in China: The New “Outstanding Legal Personnel Education Scheme” and Its Implications

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenhua Shan
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Quality Of Education ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Competitive Position ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Important Measure ◽  
Education In China

AbstractAfter more than 60 years of development, the People's Republic of China has established the world's largest size of legal education, with 624 law schools and 450,000 thousands of undergraduate students currently enrolled. As Wenhua Shan explains, whilst the quality of education has also been improved, it generally falls short of meeting the domestic and international challenges that China is facing in legal education and practice. The most important measure recently adopted by the Chinese Government to enhance the quality of legal education, the “Outstanding Legal Personnel Education Scheme”, is poised to bring significant changes to the structure, contents and methods of Chinese legal education; and it will boost deeper cooperation between law schools and the practice sectors. Further measures are nevertheless required to achieve the desired results of the scheme and to place Chinese legal education in an internationally competitive position.

scholarly journals An Invitation Regarding Law and Legal Education, and Imagining the Future

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J Madison
Keyword(s):  
Professional Practice ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Legal Information ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Law Professors

This Essay consists of an invitation to participate in conversations about the future of legal education in ways that integrate rather than distinguish several threads of concern and revision that have emerged over the last decade. Conversations about the future of legal education necessarily include conversations about the future of law practice, legal services, and law itself. Some of those start with the somewhat stale questions: What are US law professors doing, what should they be doing, and why? Those questions are still relevant and important, but they are no longer the only relevant questions, and they are not the only places to start. What about other legal educators, meaning those who teach and train in legal services worlds but who don’t teach the professional practice of law or the delivery of traditional legal services? What about those who are involved deeply in the production and distribution of law, legal services, and legal information but who are not, themselves, lawyers? Why start with current teachers; why not start with current or future students, or current or future clients, or current or future institutions, or current or future sets of values? Expand the communities of interest and identities of potential participants not only beyond elite US law schools, and not only beyond the private law firms that constitute BigLaw, but also beyond the US and beyond North America. The invitation goes out, in short, to a much broader audience than US law professors, and it is framed in broad but pragmatic terms.

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