Тhe problem of the quality of legal education or why do we have what we should not have?

Addressing the pressing issues of Ukraine's economic and humanitarian integration into the European community requires, in particular, a significant modernization of the national legal education. There has long been a demand in society and law enforcement practice for a new generation of lawyers capable of solving complex legal cases. Some critics of the current state of affairs rightly point to a wide range of reasons for the unsatisfactory state of legal education and propose measures to overcome this situation. In the author's opinion, they usually have their own ratio, but are still of a derivative, secondary nature. Unfortunately, critical analysis does not pay sufficient attention to the direct causes of negative phenomena in the field of legal education and effective means of overcoming them. These include, first and foremost, the lack of a regulatory and priority definition of the legal and social status of the basic participants in the educational process – research and teaching staff – in the hierarchy of positions in higher education institutions and guarantees of its realization. The workload of research and teaching staff, on whom the quality of legal education directly depends, is also excessively complicated. Therefore, based on the analysis of relevant scientific publications, regulatory materials and the results of a sociological survey, the author critically assesses the phenomenon of the diminished role and place of academic staff, in particular in the hierarchical structure of positions in higher education institutions; the reasons for the inadequate scientific and pedagogical training of individual teachers; the imbalance of specialization of teaching activities at the departments; bureaucratization of the educational process; lack of clear standardization of the teaching load, which ultimately deprives teachers of the opportunity to constantly improve their scientific and methodological level and qualifications. The author comes to the conclusion that there is no reasonable proportionality between the current requirements for legal education and the real capabilities of academic staff to fulfill them. Therefore, the author emphasizes that the reform of legal education should be started abovo, i.e., by creating appropriate conditions for academic staff to carry out their creative, scientific and pedagogical activities.

legal education, reform, academic staff, teaching load, research and methodological work