Staffing the Judiciary: Transforming Legal Education to Reboot Justice
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Last year, in November, the European Commission recommended opening negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU. And at the same time, she published a report on Ukraine, which in particular talks about requirements for judicial reform and legal education. After all, one is impossible without the other. Ukraine will need new personnel for quality cleaning of the judicial corps.
Back in 2020, the reform of legal education was identified as a separate item in the Government’s activity program, but no significant progress has been made so far. Despite the support of the Committee on Education, Science and Innovation, the concept of the development of legal education was never approved. Colleges and police universities continue to prepare lawyers, the entrance requirements have not increased, and in some places they have even become lower.
However, there are also certain successes – at the end of November 2023, the Unified state qualification exam for graduates of the master’s degree in law was held – one of the key aspects of the legal reform. It needs to be further developed, better quality test tasks should be developed, transparent and clear assessment criteria should be established, reasonable threshold scores, etc. More details later.
Cutlets separately, the Ministry of Internal Affairs separately: legal education and training of police officers
It is important to stop the training of lawyers by police universities under the authority of such structures as the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Security Service of Ukraine. Today, these educational institutions train a third of all lawyers in Ukraine, and have about half of all state funding for the training of bachelors in law. But students are taught marching rather than critical thinking.
In addition, it is these universities that train lawyers for the general market in large volumes. And at the same time, civilian educational institutions relatively recently began to train specialists in a separate specialty “Law enforcement activity”. This does not contribute to the quality of training for either one or the other and as a result creates an imbalance in the higher education system.
Low standards – weak applicants
The rules by which law faculties are admitted today do not fully ensure the selection of strong and motivated applicants. Admission to contract training in 2023 has been simplified: the required competitive score has been lowered from 140 to 120, and it is still possible to bypass taking state independent exams. Also, the insufficiently high level of the threshold points for the Unified professional entrance test does not allow to screen out applicants with a low level of knowledge.
In 2023, less than 2% of entrants who took part in the law test did not pass the minimum threshold (namely, only 172 people out of 9,892 people). Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the requirements for law and international law entrants.
The issue of licensing law schools remains open. In July 2022, a corresponding draft of the CMU resolution was presented for public discussion, but its further fate is unknown, as well as whether it was adopted at all.
Budget places should go after students
State funding for the training of lawyers today is divided among individual state customers. Since lawyers are trained by institutions of higher education, which are in the sphere of management not only of the Ministry of Education and Culture, the funds are accordingly distributed among all state bodies.
At the same time, the distribution system differs significantly. In the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, state contracts for the training of lawyers are distributed on the basis of a wide competition among all educational institutions. But in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, and the Security Service of Ukraine, the higher-ups receive a predetermined number of seats agreed with the ministry.
Entrants to these institutions do not compete on equal terms for state funding with other entrants, which does not guarantee that the strongest applicants will receive a place. Obviously, it needs to be reviewed and changed.
No plagiarism
It is necessary to build a system of integrity in higher education institutions, and for this to create an appropriate legal framework that will make corruption and dishonest behavior impossible. The draft law “On academic integrity”, which is being developed by the Committee on Education, Science and Innovation, should expand the regulation of certain aspects of academic integrity, the list of types of violations, diversify the ways of influencing violators, etc.
Separate issues of combating corruption in higher education have already been included in the State Anti-Corruption Program for 2023-2025.
Not in quantity, but in quality
Another key step is the optimization of the network of educational institutions. This issue is already enshrined in all strategic documents, in particular in the Higher Education Development Strategy for 2022-2032. The Ministry of Education and Culture has even developed a draft law that provides for the subordination of all universities that are under the management of other state bodies (except the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Ministry of Justice) to the Ministry of Education and Science. However, this draft law also has a number of rather controversial norms, and therefore needs to be revised.
In its report, the European Commission also emphasizes the need to modernize educational programs with an emphasis on ethics, practical training, and EU law. It is in this process that the main role will belong to law schools, which are responsible for the creation and filling of educational programs, personnel support.
The Ukrainian authorities must pay attention to the demands of European partners and take active measures to reform legal education, as this will be important for the development of the rule of law in Ukraine. These are ambitious tasks, their implementation will require time and the unification of stakeholders. But this is the only way we will breathe new life into legal education, solve the personnel shortage in the long term, and build the rule of law.
Ivan Shemelynets, expert on legal education, DEJURE foundation, specially for UP. Life
Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view.
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