The Legal Innovation Theory and Legal Education

Abstract

Law, being determined by social changes, undergoes significant changes. The scale of social transformation gives grounds to assume that a new taxonomy of law is being established. This includes changes in the legal profession, significant transformation of the demand of the state and industry in terms of the knowledge and competences of a modern lawyer. Accordingly, this increases responsibility of legal educational institutions and law faculties for training lawyers. The paper attempts to form an understanding of legal innovation and legal innovation theory, to highlight the subject matter and methodological areas of legal innovation formation. In particular, the legal innovation theory is defined by the author as an interdisciplinary field of knowledge about the processes of emergence, implementation and administration of innovations in jurisprudence. At the same time, the subject-legal component of the legal innovation theory lies at the level of legal understanding, where comprehension and rethinking of what is the law of the 21st century is taking place. In turn, legal innovation actually constitutes legitimization of social or scientific and technological innovation, incorporation of a new normative structure (institution) that qualitatively transforms regulation of emerging or predicted social relations into the field of law. The study of legal innovations, being a subject area of the legal innovation theory, involves conceptualization of knowledge about innovation process in law and its administration, as well as the study of the transformation of the law itself and the legal profession, since legal innovations create a demand for new knowledge and competences for lawyers. Based on the achievements of the theory of the pedagogical innovation theory, the paper outlines methodological approaches to building a new model of legal education in conjunction of the content component, new teaching methods, formats of the educational process, logistics of the educational process that influence the formation and implementation of legal innovations. Some approaches have been put into practice at Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL) and their application can be extended.