Law remains one of the most popular study programmes among applicants. The trend towards massive enrolment of law students (even despite the war, which has caused a noticeable outflow of students) continued in 2024. Specifically, during the 2024 admission campaign, applicants submitted more than 40,000 applications for the “Law” specialty. But does such a huge popularity of legal education necessarily correlate with its quality?
Students’ understanding of law as an indicator of the quality of legal education
The task of the university is not only to provide law students with formal education in the form of a thorough knowledge of legal texts. Often, people form the impression, based on American cinema, that lawyers memorize and can quote any article of the law or regulation. However, firstly, such “inflated” standards do not always correspond to reality (and this is normal, because a lawyer is not a robot programmed to memorise legal texts). Secondly, it is important not only to know the law, but also to understand it correctly to apply it properly in practice. While this “understanding” is sometimes not so easy. One of the reasons for this is that understanding the essence of law is based on the worldview of a lawyer, which is shaped over time by various factors. Studying at a higher education institution is only one component of this process. Therefore, the key role of legal education is to lay the “right” foundation for such an understanding, based on democratic values.
There are three key types of legal understanding That is, understanding the essence of law in legal theory:
- The natural law type, characterised by the principle of the rule of law and the recognition of the values of human rights, equality, freedom, and justice.
- The positivist type, which is based on the notion that any legal activity (although not only by lawyers) must strictly adhere to the requirements of the law.
- The sociological type, according to which finding the right solution requires consideration of society’s needs in each specific case.
Ideally, students should be focused on ensuring that any decision they make embodies the idea of justice. If the situation requires, they should have the courage to deviate from the provisions of an unjust law (for example, as the judge did in a 2017 case when, as a punishment for the illegal sale of a pack of cigarettes, the court sentenced an elderly woman to a fine 100 times (!) a fine 100 times (!) smaller Instead of UAH 17,000, she received only UAH 170. The judge's decision was based on the fact that the woman received a local pension of UAH 1,500, so she would have had to save up for years to pay the full amount of the fine. than stipulated by law). But do universities truly succeed in fulfilling their role of training specialists with such an understanding of the essence of legal phenomena?
Hype and quality of legal education: is there a connection?
To assess whether modern legal education really prepares future lawyers to face the challenges awaiting them in legal practice, ALI conducted a study on the role of universities in shaping students’ legal understanding. The results demonstrated that students do not always manage to make a fair decision, that go beyond “blind” adherence to the “letter” of the law. However, this does not mean that students reject the value of the rule of law. In fact, students have a fairly good understanding of how human rights should be ensured and protected (i.e., the ideas of natural law). However, unfortunately, the thoroughness of this knowledge is only manifested at the level of reproducing theoretical material. In practice, law students tend to act quite differently. The study led to an interesting conclusion that, when students reject the idea of the rule of law in real life, they do not necessarily take the side of strict compliance with the law, i.e. positivism, as might be expected. Instead, their decisions are primarily influenced by the specific circumstances of the case. This indicates that students prioritize the sociological concept in their approach to legal application.
Thus, the study highlighted the “gap” between students’ theoretical knowledge and their practical legal skills. This “gap” cannot be bridged during four years of undergraduate study. On the contrary, over time, the number of students who, despite their formal commitment to the unconditional protection of human rights at the level of theoretical knowledge, actually lean towards strict adherence to legal norms increases. This trend indicates that higher education institutions are “not doing enough” in terms of preparing students for the challenges they will face in the future legal practice. This refers to cases when, in difficult situations, a lawyer must critically assess the provisions of legal acts for their compliance with the rule of law and sometimes deviate from such norms in the pursuit of justice. As a result, the “overly theoretical” focus of legal education creates risks that, for some lawyers, upholding the principles of rule of law, values of equality and justice will become only a formal requirement, one that is not consistently applied when resolving practical situations.
In reality, four-year students who will graduate from universities in just a few months and start their practical work as lawyers, still have not learned how to apply their acquired knowledge in practice. This is hardly the level of preparation these students expected to receive when they enrolled in law school four years ago. Therefore, it turns out that the stated expectations regarding the quality of legal education have not been met. Thus, all this hype around legal education does not necessarily indicate the high quality of legal training (although, of course, the level of quality of the educational process varies depending on the university).
What modern legal education lacks and what to do about it: a student perspective
To identify and address the shortcomings of the educational process, it is worth listening to the students themselves. As part of a survey conducted during the study, students generally rated the quality of legal education in Ukraine as “average”.
Among the key “problematic” aspects of the educational process that require optimisation, students highlighted the following:
- In the educational process, the primary focus is on the studying theoretical concepts, so there is a demand for developing the skills to apply the acquired knowledge in practice.
- Lack of innovative approaches and formalism in teaching.
- The inclusion of mandatory disciplines in the curriculum that do not meet the interests of students.
- Lack of real opportunity to choose elective subjects.
- Difficulties caused by the remote learning format.
Of course, these issues affect different educational institutions to varying degrees – some face a greater combination of these problems, why other experience fewer. However, the question of how to improve the quality of legal education remains relevant for the entire system of higher education in Ukraine.
To correct the identified shortcomings, students offer their perspective on solving the outlined problems. In their opinion, the way to improve the quality of the educational process should be based on the following steps:
- Increase the number of lecture sessions across all years of study, starting from the first year, involving practicing lawyers.
- Increase the number of lecturers with practical experience in the field of law.
- Introduce specific training sessions in courts and law firms for students starting from the first year of study.
The idea that more emphasis should be placed on the practical aspect of teaching legal disciplines is also widely supported by government agencies, international institutions and the public sector. Therefore, to improve the quality of legal education and, consequently, the training of legal professionals, universities should start working on reorienting their approaches to teaching law in a more practical direction.
