Bridging the legal education gap in the former Soviet Union

Developing practical legal skills

More than 50 Kazakh lawyers took part in the first two training sessions held in Almaty at the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004. Trainers from Russia and the United States used interactive teaching methods such as brainstorming sessions, role-playing, and group discussions to teach skills in areas like interviewing, consultation, analysis of cases and legal positions, working with evidence, examining witnesses, and arguing cases. Roundtables were also set up to allow the participants a forum to discuss the necessary professional qualities of lawyers and ethics-related problems.

"Interactive methods are great because they teach lawyers to analyse and work with specific cases, as opposed to relying solely on information contained in laws and repetition of legal texts studied in law school," said Cynthia Alkon, Head of Rule of Law at ODIHR. "And when it comes to learning practical skills, nothing works better than practice."

While the first stages of the ODIHR training strategy targeted Kazakhstan, plans to carry out similar programmes in Kyrgyzstan are already under way. In the future, the office also plans to promote the use of successful models from these programmes in other states of the former Soviet Union.

Background

Though the Soviet Union disappeared more than a decade ago, its legacy continues to influence many aspects of daily life in its former republics. The practice of law is no exception, where the quality of legal services available in many parts of the former Soviet Union suffers from education practices left over from communist days. The economic breakdown that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union has left many ordinary citizens without the means to pay for legal services when needed.

Legal education in the Soviet Union placed special emphasis on the memorization of copious amounts of legal material, compromising practical skills that lawyers need to practise effectively, such as advocacy, interviewing, and negotiating skills, as well as professional ethics and practice management.

"While significant changes have been made in legal education, most law students continue to graduate without any practical experience and without the basic skills they need to be lawyers," said Ekaterina Shugrina, Directing Attorney for the Advocacy Program of the American Bar Association's Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative in Moscow. "This problem is compounded by the fact that legal communities also do not, as a rule, provide opportunities for legal professionals to continue their education: there are no courses where practising lawyers can pick up new skills, and there are few qualified lawyers to turn to for advice or mentoring."

"Lawyers in many of these countries face the added challenge of poor legal structures surrounding the practice of law," said the ODIHR's Alkon. "They are simply often not paid or are poorly paid for their services. In many places, structural reforms need to be made at the national level so that lawyers have the necessary incentives and protections to enable them to do their jobs."

Consequences

Those affected most by poor legal services are ordinary citizens, often people who are entitled to social benefits but do not know how to get them, or who have the right to housing but do not know how to secure that right. The impact is often even more pronounced in criminal cases, where the consequences of poor legal services are severe, including the deprivation of freedom or, in some cases, the loss of life.

The low standard of living of most citizens in the former Soviet Union means that high-quality legal assistance is available only to the wealthy - a tiny minority of the population.