Globalization has accelerated exponentially in recent decades, leading to massive movements of people, goods, services and capital – although global trade seems to be approaching a peak[1] – mainly due to advances in transport and communication technologies. The great benefits of globalization come with some global risks, including:[2] Bryant Garth is a graduate of Yale (1972), Stanford Law School (1975) and the European University Institute in Florence (1979). He began his career with Mauro Cappelletti at the Florence Access to Justice Project, which resulted in the publication of five volumes (1977-1979). He began teaching at Indiana University in 1979, became dean in 1986, and joined the American Bar Foundation as a director in 1990, where he remained until 2005. He then served as Dean of Southwestern School of Law for seven years before moving to the Irvine School of Law at the University of California. Two of his seven major books (three edited) on law and globalization, which he co-authored with Yves Dezalay, were awarded the Herbert Jacob Prize for Best Book of the Year by the Law and Society Association. Gregory Shaffer received his J.D. from Stanford Law School (1988) and his BA from Dartmouth College (1980) and practiced law with Coudert Brothers and Bredin Prat in Paris. It started at the University of Wisconsin, became Wing Tat, and so far I have advocated for a complete transformation of legal education that is taking place around the world. Admittedly, this process is already well underway in many elite and highly innovative institutions, particularly in the United States[10], but also around the world. [11] However, it is necessary to put this into perspective, as there are several thousand law schools around the world, and the percentage of those that have already begun the transformation is negligible. [12] The ASIL Teaching International Law interest group will hold a discussion on the book The Globalization of Legal Education: A Critical Perspective (Open Access, Oxford University Press 2022), edited by Bryant Garth and Gregory Shaffer (ASIL President). The event is co-funded by the International Legal Theory Interest Group.
The book critically examines the processes and transnational diffusion of legal education reforms, examining the influences of imperial and imperial competition, American power, and neoliberal economic policies. Professors Garth and Shaffer are accompanied by a chapter author, Professor Swethaa Ballakrishnan. Professor Md. Rizwanul Islam will be the presenter, and Professor M.J. Durkee will be the moderator. Globalization means that law schools are increasingly accepting students from other parts of the world, including countries with very different (legal) cultures and traditions. To ensure that they have a deeply enriching experience, it is important that they feel at home by instilling in them a deep understanding and appreciation of other cultures and worldviews. While this diversity is a source of richness in itself, it can also be used productively to promote the study of different legal systems through the use of innovative, challenging and team-based methods. In this way, students learn and teach each other`s own (legal) traditions and thus foster both a deeper knowledge of their own legal system and an appreciation of different types of problem design and possible solutions.
Students learn that normative approaches to the law are essential to understanding it while learning to deeply respect the normative background of others. They will experience that they are all global citizens, sharing hopes and challenges. From a practical point of view, the promotion of student clubs and other student initiatives helps a lot in this research, because students feel that the university belongs to them too. Javier de Cendra is Dean of IE Law School and President of Law Schools Global League. He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law of University College London and a member of the International Advisory Board of CEID Colombia. As an academic manager, he focuses on developing the combination of knowledge and skills that legal professionals and students need in the field of law to ensure that law and legal systems remain relevant to society. Law schools must prepare their students to work in a highly globalized and therefore very exciting world, but also in a VUCA world (characterized by vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity). To succeed in such a world, students must provide a sound understanding of multiple legal systems, global law (i.e. the legal principles, norms, rules, and institutions that emerge beyond and permeate each of national legal systems), and other disciplines that shape the global legal order, including politics, economics, and the humanities.
especially philosophy and anthropology. Given that one of the main drivers of change in law and legal systems is technological disruption, it is unacceptable not to keep students engaged in it throughout their law studies. The main reason why innovation is so important is that modern models of legal education are suitable for training lawyers for the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century and not for the technological revolution of the twenty-first century. Although this is an oversimplification of reality, a large number of law schools are rapidly moving towards a new paradigm of legal education[6], This highlights the fact that the majority of schools are committed to quality improvement within the limits of current paradigms and/or are taking rather modest steps, to respond to the real challenges – creation of a legal clinic, intensification of international exchanges, inclusion of more courses on comparative law methods, etc. This means that the majority of law schools are still very far from what we should all be. The development of a theory of change in legal education is important, but would obviously be beyond the scope of this short article. With this in mind, I would like to propose some measures that have already been adopted by many law schools around the world and others that are adopted less frequently, the combination of which can help schools stay true to their mission. In summary, the main risk for law schools is not that they fail to produce “practical” law graduates, as practitioners often say, because the consequences of this situation remain within the limits of employers, who must devote time and resources to training new employees. The greatest risk would be that law schools would seriously fail to fulfil their core mission, with corresponding implications for the legal profession and legal systems as a whole in the context of a high-tech and highly globalised world.
All of this, of course, is not new to the management of law schools around the world, and there are several efforts to address them, even if the majority struggle to cope with them. [9] What are the consequences of not innovating on a large scale? A major consequence may be that graduates do not learn from the outset to conceptualize global legal systems and their challenges, and therefore cannot think of possible legal solutions that are effective at this level. However, the consequences of the second order are much more profound, including the graduation of students who are finding it increasingly difficult to find skilled jobs, further undermining the credibility of the legal profession,[7] law schools and legal systems. [8] Legal education plays an important role in the development of lawyers who act as social engineers and advocate for nation-building.