OSCE presents concept for legal education reform in Ukraine
An OSCE-supported concept for legal education reform in Ukraine was presented to parliamentarians, legal professionals, law students and representatives of lawyers associations at an event held on 14 September 2016 in Kyiv.
The document was developed by the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Justice with support of the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine.
Minister of Education and Science Liliya Hrynevych spoke about the changes introduced by the concept, which include among others a mandatory five-year standardized master programme in Law and a unified state exam on access to the legal profession for graduate students.
Vaidotas Verba, OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine, said: “There are over 200 law schools in Ukraine, which produce over 30,000 graduates, and only slightly more than 10 per cent of them practice law in the future. The main problem is that the quality of legal education does not respond to market needs.”
As a next step, the OSCE Project Co-ordinator and its partners will support public discussions of the concept and elaborate on a necessary legal framework in order to implement it.
The presentation was followed by a roundtable discussion on the modernization of legal education in Ukraine and the achievements of a 2016 testing experiment for admission to master programmes in Law. Earlier this year, the Project Co-ordinator assisted the Education and Science Ministry in preparing and launching the first-ever external independent admissions test for students entering master programmes in law. Nine leading Ukrainian law schools participated in this innovative project, aimed both to ensure the quality of higher legal education and fight corruption in law schools.
The presentation was organized as part of a project aimed at improving legal education and promoting human rights education in Ukraine, implemented upon the request of the Education and Science and Justice Ministries.
The OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine supports a comprehensive approach to reforming legal education by the means of developing a legal education standard, launching an external test for students entering master degree programmes in law, as well as introducing innovative approaches to the content and methodology of teaching law courses.