REFORMING LEGAL EDUCATION IN UKRAINE: REALITIES AND PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

During the last years Ukraine is in the state of permanent reformation of all the key spheres of society and state. This process of reformation concerns as well higher education; however, the main attention in this process is paid to reforming the legal education, which eventually remains the main object of changes. The substantial reformation of legal education was started by order of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine of January 27, 2016, No. 121-p «On conducting in 2016 as an experiment the entrance examinations during admission to studying for a Master of Laws Degree on the basis of Bachelor`s Degree in specialty 081«Law», with application of the organizational and technological processes of external independent evaluation». One cannot omit to mention the law in draft «On juridical (legal) education and the general access to legal profession», registered in Supreme Council on September 28, 2017. It is reasonable that one of the questions that have been raised while discussing this draft law in social networks was the question of social need for such law. After all, legal education is provided on the same basic principles as the other types of higher education. The peculiar features characteristic of it (there are not so many of them) can be properly regulated by by-laws. Otherwise, sooner or later, the question, concerning the legal regulation at the level of the law as well of the other types of educational activity in the other branches of education, will arise. The draft law provides some radical innovations that are ambiguously perceived by the legal community. First of all, there is a negative perception of introducing the overall Master's program for future lawyers. In the current conditions of legal education functioning, when the provisions of the Bologna Convention are implemented, the multi-degree principle of obtaining education creates the conditions for academic mobility of students, including the international exchanges for higher education. The draft law shows explicit hyperbolizing of both foreign experience and knowledge of foreign language during the conduct of educational activities. In particular, it is proposed to deliver at least two academic disciplines in one of the official languages of the Council of Europe. A logical question arises – what is the sense of delivering in foreign language the disciplines based on national legislation? When it goes about the need to study a foreign language, then it is obvious that this problem needs to be solved in another way. As well the requirement for educational institutions that at least one of the scientific and pedagogical workers shall have a Doctor of Laws Degree, obtained abroad, is unclear. One of the cornerstones of the proposed reform is the passing of a single state qualification exam by all graduates of the law schools. The draft law foresees that it is after the successful passing the respective exam graduate can obtain Master of Laws diploma of state sample. I think that after such innovation the value of obtaining legal education in classical universities with many years of traditions will be lost forever. The applicant will be oriented to obtaining the necessary quantity of credits in the easiest way, and for those students, who study for payment, as well in the cheapest way. After all, the status of the university, its long history, the existence of law schools, which were formed over decades, will not matter, since the main priority is to pass a single state exam. It is obvious that education should be permanently changed to some extent, as far as this sphere of society shall as quickly as possible react to changes in society itself. At the same time I should like to express hope that stability will finally prevail in the educational sphere, as one of the guarantees of ensuring the own national, but not the borrowed academic traditions.