Abstract
Experiential learning approach in legal education is a global influential trend. Legal clinics is one of the most obvious examples of including experiential learning approach into the educational curriculum for law students. The main educational value of legal clinics is a providing training opportunity for students to apply their legal knowledge and skills in professional simulations like role plays of interviewing, counselling, negotiations, mock trials (first instance hearing) and moot courts (appeal hearing). These type of training programs allow law students to test their ability to client-oriented and problem-solving. The Russian legal clinics community has been actively developing since the mid of 1990s for more than 30 years. More than 100 Law Schools over Russia have own legal clinics. Clinicians overview their experience and share this experience between clinicians community. At the same time only relevantly small part of law students have access to effective training of legal skills because of various reasons, but mostly because of relevantly small number of legal educators who use the experiential-learning approach. Transition of experiential-learning best practices into online format is a good tool of scaling the number of students who could be trained in legal skills significantly. The paper describes the collection of unsupervised online learning modules devoted to legal skills, including case strategy, interviewing, counselling, legal writing and trial skills. These unsupervised online learning modules are developed based on modern instructional approaches to developing of online educational courses. The piloting of the unsupervised online learning modules demonstrates that these modules might be used as a supplementary educational tool and as a part of main educational curriculum for law students.
Highlights
Experiential learning approach in legal education is a global influential trend
It can be argued that modern legal education in Russia does not teach the skills and values that are essential for professional activity
Taking into account the research on legal education conducted by the Carnegie Endowment back in 2007 (Sullivan, 2007, p. 8) professionalization of a lawyer includes knowledge, skills and values that a lawyer should be able to apply to solve a client’s problem, to provide grounds for his or her decisions taking into account the rules of professional conduct
Summary
Taking into account the research on legal education conducted by the Carnegie Endowment back in 2007 (Sullivan, 2007, p. 8) professionalization of a lawyer includes knowledge (functional knowledge), skills and values that a lawyer should be able to apply to solve a client’s problem, to provide grounds for his or her decisions taking into account the rules of professional conduct. Professional skills of a lawyer can be considered as implicit knowledge that is poorly transmitted directly (Yasvin, 2020) They can be learned through experience under the guidance of a qualified lawyer or legal educator. – case development and case strategy, – interviewing the client, – counseling the client, – legal writing, – opening statement, – presentation of evidence in court, – judicial interrogation, – closing arguments These skills are based on soft skills, but have their own perspectives in relation to the professional activity of a lawyer. Since 2012, the Center, together with other partners has been organizing two student schools annually — Summer and Winter Schools — the purpose of which is to develop the professional skills of lawyers, as well as to familiarize students with current legal topics that are not included in the main curriculum of universities, for example, alternative methods of conflict resolution or compliance requirements. This manual was published in both paper and electronic versions, both versions of the tutorial including electronic applications that allowed teachers to use the teaching materials in their teaching practice
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