Publication details
Legal Writing Education – The Central European Perspective
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Training and experience in the practical skills of researching and legal writing have not been for a long time in the center of the interest of legal education at law schools in Central and Eastern European countries. Legal education at university level was focused primarily on theoretical issues. Whereas the more practical parts legal education were – and to a great extent still are – seen as a task for additional practical legal traineeship periods that prospect young lawyers have to follow at law firms after concluding their legal degree programs at university level and before being admitted to the bar exam and to practice law. However, the market demand has increased the importance of these skills and due to the competition among universities they are becoming a regular part of legal education. From this point of view, the U.S. tradition of education in legal skills is a great source of inspiration and ideas. However, the legal environment in Europe is different. The international law as well as lex mercatoria play more significant role. In addition to that the state law is often accompanied and sometimes even replaced by EU law. The relation between the EU law and state law is to some extent similar to the relation between the U.S. federal and state law. However, there are some important differences (indirect effect of EU law or its multilingual character for example) which have to be taken into the account while teaching legal or writing skills. Thus, in order to provide good education, the U.S. practice cannot be simply copied, but has to be adjusted to the European conditions. In this light the presentation attempts at a comparative discussion of the current situation of legal writing education in Central Europe in the context of the laws regulating the access to legal professions in various countries of the region (i.a. Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland). A short concluding outlook will deal with recent transnational initiatives within the EU in order to build bridges across different (Central) European traditions of legal education and to improve the situation in terms of internationalisation of legal skills teaching in Europe. In particular the current attempt of the European Academy of Legal Theory to establish a new EU Erasmus plus-funded "Strategic Partnership" on legal skills teaching. One of the related challenges which we face at the moment is to prepare a textbook which would reflect not only traditional approach to legal research and writing, but also the global perspective of law, the EU law perspective as well as recent technological development in research technologies. |