Reforming legal education in Ukraine: key aspects

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With the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the country’s integration with the European Union received a solid boost. In just the two years since the Russian invasion Kyiv has been on a long and productive journey from filling out an application form to the opening of accession negotiations at the end of June 2024. Further progress depends on Ukraine and its ability to develop a strategy for reforms in the coming years. One of the most important tracks in this context is judiciary reform, which started in 2014 and which will continue along the way to joining the EU as a full member.

In this context, the reform of the national legal system constitutes a major challenge for Ukrainian civil society on its way to changing its institutions and meeting the requirements of the European Commission. Precisely, one of the outcomes that the EC expects from Ukraine is high-quality and corruption-free legal education.

This goal is familiar to Ukrainian experts in legal education. Four years ago, civil society organizations consolidated their position in a manifesto, which determined one of the basic principles of legal education reform in Ukraine. This is the institutional division of legal education and law enforcement training. The importance of this particular condition was recognized in the G7 ambassadors’ “Priorities for 2024”. In their statement, the diplomats supported the establishment of an “institutionally delineated legal education and law enforcement training”. However, the way to any sort of desired legal education system is full of obstacles. These are the result of previous decades’ endorsement of an ineffective, Soviet-spirited system, which has little in common with any EU member state’s legal education.

Modern legal education in Ukraine

Ukraine’s legal education system represents a clear dichotomy. While in the EU member states there is a clear division between law schools (which prepare lawyers) and police academies (which prepare law enforcement specialists), the system is more complicated in Ukraine. The training of lawyers takes place in both civil law schools and educational institutions “with specialized conditions of instruction”. The second amounts to the rough equivalent of a police academy. Despite both types of institutions preparing lawyers, they are subordinated to different governmental bodies. While those at law schools are aligned with the ministry of education and science, universities with specialized conditions of instruction are connected to law enforcement bodies (the ministry of internal affairs, security service, etc.).

Experts claim that this system of preparing lawyers has proven to be ineffective at three levels:

• The application and admission process. Law enforcement universities admit about the same number of applicants as the general law schools but their admission process does not require transparent competition. The selection of candidates therefore takes place behind closed doors. Moreover, around ten law enforcement universities offer about the same number of state-funded (i.e. free of charge) places as around 50 civil law schools, which shows a clear imbalance. This is especially true considering the lower level of preparation graduates receive in this first kind of institution.
• The training of students. The quality of legal education in law enforcement universities is clearly not as good as in civil law schools. This is evident from the exam results of BA students. In fact, the results of the 2022 and 2023 MA entrance exams indicate that those BA graduates who studied law in law enforcement universities demonstrated results that were below average. Moreover, the results were even worse in 2021, the last year before the introduction of a simplified exam model due to the full-scale war. One of the key factors concerning these poor results is the lack of academic freedom. Instead of encouraging this ideal, the principles of legal education in such universities are based on subordination, discipline, etc.
• Use of public funds. A 2019 audit indicated that public funds are often misused by law enforcement universities. This is in spite of the fact that they are better funded than civil universities. In particular, the audit reports on many ineffective decisions made by the universities with specialized conditions of education and admits that there is a lack of strategic planning in such institutions.

It is important to underline that these are institutional problems. As a result, institutional “delineation” is required when it comes to the preparation of lawyers. In practice, delineation means the creation of two independent tracks for law enforcement training (universities subordinated to the ministry of internal affairs) and for the preparation of lawyers (universities subordinated to the ministry of education and science). The possibility of preparing lawyers in law enforcement universities would be eliminated in this new approach.

The steps to reform

Ukrainian experts and MPs have already attempted to start a dialogue about the reform. In November 2023 the members of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy established a working group on legal education, which involved key experts representing civil society organizations in drafting the reform framework. So far the group members have met on two occasions.

However, it is already clear that there is a consensus in the expert community about the time frame of the reform. The delineation of the education of lawyers and law enforcement specialists, with several stages of transformation, is likely to take between four to six years. This amounts to the full first and second cycles of education and includes a margin to complete the transformation. On the legislative level, the change of norms and regulations will define the new principles of legal education, in which the preparation of lawyers and law enforcement specialists will be pursued in different institutions. At the same time, the curriculum for legal education must be unified and general standards must be adopted. On a structural level, the reform will mainly concern the universities involved in the transformation. For the universities with specialized conditions of education, the reform will mean the liquidation of the track that prepares lawyers. At the same time, the law enforcement track will end at civil universities.

Is there a consensus between all stakeholders?

This reform in legal education concerns several major groups of stakeholders. This includes institutions connected to the ministry of internal affairs, such as its subordinated universities. This is also the case regarding bodies that are closely tied to the ministry of education and science. The national agency for higher education quality assurance is also involved alongside the professional community of lawyers and university staff and students. These groups of stakeholders have different opinions regarding the need for reform, although a dialogue seems possible.

The main disagreement in this case concerns the two policy-making institutions. While the ministry of education and science advocates for institutional delineation, the ministry of internal affairs insists on preserving the status quo. One of the main reasons for this is the disproportionate allocation of funds. While all public universities are subsidized by the state, with the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine most universities have experienced dwindling funds. However, the universities with specialized conditions of instruction, subordinated to the government’s law enforcement bodies, were given priority for public funding. Due to this, they continue to operate without any real issues at the moment. These universities can subsequently offer inexpensive BA and MA programmes in legal education, which are favoured by prospective students in comparison to the more expensive contracts offered by civil legal schools subordinated to the ministry of education and science.

Conclusion

Ukraine’s integration with the EU requires multilevel changes in the national judiciary. One such level concerns legal education. Specifically, Ukraine needs a new legal education system with delineated tracks for the preparation of lawyers and law enforcement specialists in order to ensure the effectiveness of the judiciary. For Ukraine’s legal education to meet EU standards, courses for the preparation of lawyers and law enforcement specialists have to take place in different institutions – law schools in public universities on the one hand, and police academies on the other. While Ukrainian MPs and civil society representatives have demonstrated a desire to pursue such reform, the consolidation of the main stakeholders’ efforts are also required in order to bring about meaningful change. All in all, Ukrainian society will be the main beneficiary of this prospective reform’s success, as the country needs a functioning judiciary to keep building democracy.

Ivan Posylnyi is the project manager of the Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition, an association of leading organizations for implementing reforms in Ukraine.

education, EU, law, legal, reform, Ukraine