Legal Education in Conditions of Digital Economy Development: Modern Challenges

Abstract

Digital economy has become today’s reality. Its implementation in our country is the realization of the state programme approved by Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation. The complete transition to digital economy is going to be finished by 2030. The creation of the information environment is systemic; it encompasses various segments of public life. In particular, electronic technologies are being actively introduced into education in Russia, significantly increasing its quality and efficiency. Similar innovations appeared in the legal cluster of education. Of course, they can have a significant impact on the change of approaches to the formation of professional competences of future lawyers. The analysis of the practice shows that at present social order is articulated specifically for specialists who are fluent in electronic technologies and are able to use them to solve complicated legal problems. We found it interesting to study the approaches to this problem in foreign literature. The positive experience accumulated abroad could be useful for optimizing the domestic educational environment and would make it possible to move much faster in this direction. The goal is to analyze the opportunities digital economy can provide for the training of lawyers specializing in criminal law and criminal process; to understand to what extent such innovations help students to prepare for independent work, allowing to reduce the period of adaptation entry into investigative and judicial activities. The leading approach to the research of this problem is the understanding that the transition to digital economy should not be formal. The implementation of the program should give us a lawyer of a new type who is going to be broad-minded, ready to solve complicated practical problems and take non-standard decisions. Also, taking into account digital technologies, these processes should be much faster, without intermediate links, with greater accuracy of the results obtained. Results: analyzing achievements of a number of foreign countries, the authors have shown the prospects for introducing digital economy into legal education in Russia. At the same time, they have identified a number of peculiarities that require increased attention when introducing this kind of technologies into Russian education. On the whole the implementation of digital technologies in education in general and in legal education in particular is positively evaluated by the authors. They have no doubts that such innovations are inevitable and will have a practical effect in the near future when students who received the appropriate skills will be able to use them in their professional activities.