Improvement of the quality of legal education

The project is funded by the German Marshall Fund-Bulgaria fund and is planned to be implemented between July, 2008 and July, 2009. It constitutes a natural continuation of BILI’s efforts to promote legal education reform as a prime prerequisite for successful legal reform and high-qualified legal services.
Its aims are to give impetus to the existing endeavours by empowering the civil society as a stakeholder and by facilitating the link between the market and the product of the law schools through surveying and analyzing perceptions of the end-users and stakeholders as to the quality of legal education and by developing a law school’s ranking system. The implementation of the project is coordinated with the Ministry of Justice and is designed to benefit its efforts to develop a law school reform policy.

The project strives in long term to facilitate the link between the legal services’ market and the performance of the law schools by means, to empower business and civic interest in the process of improving legal education as well as to engage it as a leverage for fostering and sustaining the impetus for government’s reform efforts and thus promote competitiveness among law schools.

In working towards the overall target and the long term objectives, the project sets the following immediate goals:
1) To assess the current status of legal education through polling the perceptions of its end-users and other stakeholders regarding the capacity of law faculties to prepare legal professionals possessing the theoretical knowledge and practical skills adequate to the market needs, as well as to identify the main challenges and shortcomings and formulate possible solutions.
2) To ensure a strong public participation in the process of legal education reform by fostering wide public discussion and by providing an opportunity for the end-users of law schools’ product to voice their perspective;
3) To facilitate the development of an informed governmental strategy for legal education reform and a complementary action plan through the furnishing of an in-depth analysis and carefully weighed solutions as well as by summarizing the outcomes public debate (conferences and publications) and making available Project experts to assist MoJ working groups;
4) To introduce a ranking system for Bulgarian law schools and establish a systematic tool for assessment of their work and the effects of governmental policies.

The activities fall into two main tracks:
I. Track one “Promoting public interest in law school reform and facilitating an informed governmental action for the development of a national strategy for reform in the legal education system through the conduct of a Sociological Survey and a Status Quo Analysis” and
II. Track two “Promotion of competitiveness among law faculties through the development and introduction of a national law schools ranking system”.

The final outcomes of the project resulted in two analytical materials: Compelte Law Schools Rating and an overall analysis of the Problems and Perspectives to the legal education in Bulgaria.

The full versions of the two documents can be found here: BILI_Law_Schools_Rating.pdf 
BILI_Legal_Education_Problematic_Issues_and_Perspectives_Report.pdf