Students of Russian law universities in the context of the state of the professional educational environment

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the issues of professional socialisation of legal students in modern Russia. The relevance of this research topic is defined by the meaningfulness of the successful formation of professional legal culture among legal students while studying at university and professional socialisation from the perspective of increasing the overall level of legal culture in the society and the efficiency of its legal institutions. The latter contains especially topical social and practical aspects for the contemporary Russian society which still experiences the consequences of social anomia and weakened legal control describing the initial period of system reforms. Making an attempt to solve the task, the author resorts to the methodology of Parson’s structural functional approach, as well as to the socio-cultural approach. The author gives a detailed review of functional and role specific features of legal community and their value for modern developed society. According to the author’s opinion, effective formation of professional legal culture while studying at university is required to provide the functionality of lawyers which first and foremost is related to comprehension of the rule of law as the highest professional value. Within this framework legal students are considered as representatives of young generation of Russian people. The author is pointing at the dominance of pragmatic and individualistic mindset when they enter legal educational establishments, which creates potential risk for the rule of law to be devalued in their professional motivation. The article underlines the communal value of effective professional socialization of legal students. The author studies the features of educational environment as its agent emphasizing the factors of insufficiency of students’ socialization in legal universities from the point of view of shaping the value of the rule of law as the fundamental professional priority