Sorbonne-Bologna discussion at the Riga 2002 AGM

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Information note for ELFA members regarding the development of European higher education and its possible impact on law studies in Europe

Introduction by Norbert Reich

Norbert Reich (Riga Graduate School of Law, President of ELFA) explained that the letter was written on behalf of the ELFA Board. The idea was that the Bologna Declaration was a good starting point for a discussion within ELFA, but also with the Ministers of Education.

According to him the problem with the declaration is that it does not say anything about the specifics of professional education. Also, it is important to be critical about any attempts to prolong legal education. But, on the other hand, there is also agreement that it should not be too short.

The letter includes some ideas on professional education (minimum standards, etc.) and other issues not mentioned in the Bologna Declaration (financial problems, etc.)

Discussion

Several participants presented the state of affairs and difficulties with the implementation of the Bologna Declaration in their country:

- Julian Lonbay (Birmingham): The letter is not inconsistent with the British system.

- Norbert Olszak (Strasbourg): The Declaration does not bring about many changes to our system. We already have three years to the ‘license’, and afterwards one year for the ‘maitrise’. Afterwards there is a fifth year to obtain a specialised diploma, or to do specific training to become a judge or notary.

- Manuel Alarcon (Sevilla): Three years is not enough, unless it is only meant as a preliminary training. If five years is needed for a ‘complete’ legal education, he can agree with a 3-5-8 system.

- Stefania Bariatti (Milano-Bicocca): This year the Bologna system was introduced in Italy. Before there was a four-year system. The average length of time for students to take all the courses was six or seven years. That is why it was thought that 3 plus 2 would allow students to complete their studies in 5 years. The intermediate degree is a ‘laureat’ with no access to the legal profession. After 5 years the degree is comparable with the 6 or 7 years of before. However, now basic informatics and foreign language are included in the curriculum. The programme of the 2+ has been very strongly influenced by the Bar. They have put requirements on the content. However, it does not give access to the legal professions. A full education requires to do 2 years more. If you want to get access to the Bar, you either take 2 years of apprenticeship and pass the exam, or you take 2 years of school plus 1 year of apprenticeship and then take your exam. The exam is very difficult. So in order to get access to the Bar you do 3+2+2 or 3+2+2+1. In order to become a notary you have to go to notary school for 1 year and then pass the exam. Court judges are not an organised legal profession and access is regulated by the state. What is really sad is that access to legal profession is not determined by universities.

After the ‘laureat’ there is a 3 year Bachelor degree. There are other legal professions for people who do not want to get in these specific professions in the legal field, so for people who f.ex. want to work for enterprises. This is called ‘legal services’. The previous is called ‘legal science’. Legal services does not give access to an additional 2 years in law. Students can, however, do some other 2 years, like financing.

It is not possible to say whether all this is good or bad. There are very few students in the additional 2 years.

- Frans Vanistendael (Leuven): This illustrates perfectly well that the dilemma we are facing with the Bachelor-Masters structure is not about semantics, but about hard competition. Part of the lawyers will be competing in the European market. The most enterprising students will go to the countries where the education is the shortest. The level playing field is essential in the sense that if we want to have competition, then not only the conditions for having an academic degree should be the same, but also the conditions for access to the profession. Small differences are not a problem, but if the differences are too big there will be flows of students to certain countries.

- Jurgen Kohler (Greifswald): There should be a state exam, plus 2 years, plus a specialisation phase. However, we should avoid excessive costs.

- Tom Latrup-Pedersen (Aarhus): In Denmark the system is already in place. I can support the ELFA position and I think it is necessary that we react in this way. But para 2 on page 3: “…must remain subject to further discussion”: however, we need to have two separate degrees to create flexibility. This is a way to ensure that students can go to different universities. So far we have discussed the situation in the field of practitioners, but we haven’t talked about competition between law schools in Europe. Referring to para 3, we already have quite a lot of Masters degrees of varied length, and I do not think that the 2 years are the same as these Masters. We have to realise that the current Masters degrees of 1 year is somewhere in between the Bachelor and the Masters in the context of Bologna.

- Michiel van de Kasteelen (Utrecht): In the Netherlands there is a 3-5-8 system for a small group of students, namely those who want to continue in the academic world. We have indeed adopted a 3+1 system for students who afterwards go into other fields of law. This is not a choice of the law faculties but it is dictated by the government. So the 3+1 system applies for the large majority of our students. To get access to the legal profession they need both titles before they can start their legal training. This was a choice of the faculties. This is a comment to point 3 in the letter. Concerning point 5, the whole problem in the Netherlands is that the discussion has been entirely connected to a financial political discussion. In the Netherlands there is open access, there is governmental financial aid for all education, and there are scholarships for the whole country. This prevents the flexibility we all want. If the 3+2 system would be implemented for all students, the financial implications for the government are just too big. Thus the financing of legal education can also create problems, as can be seen in the Netherlands.

The relationship between Masters and LLM programmes is a problem, not only of titles but also of what the entrance level is. In most of our Dutch faculties we have foreign students. We require an LLB. The commercial LLM has now been put in the system, but we are thinking about a further specialisation where students come back after 5 years in practice and specialise again in one field of law. Then the question is what title we should award to this.

- Bruce Carolan (Dublin): I support the primary goals of Bologna. I am reluctant to expand the discussion to access to legal profession. Para 1: need for coordination. The real question is about mobility – our concerns about access to the legal profession are misplaced. Concerning the conversion degrees: in Ireland students already need a Bachelors. After 1 year there is a Masters, followed by a considerable training period. So that totals up to 10 years. Many skills in undergraduate education are transferable to law.

- Edward Phillips (Greenwich): In the UK, the system is 3+1+2. But paralegals need recognition. In the UK the Masters takes 1 year, so basically it is an extra (fourth) year with a 25.000 word dissertation. But, what do we call a Masters?

- Vasco Pereira da Silva (Lisboa): Up till now there are 3 degrees in Portugal. Five years to the Bachelors, a further 2 years to the Masters and a further 4 years to the Doctoral. Now there is a big discussion going on in the law faculties. There are differing positions. The possibility to have something in between the 5 years and the doctorate would be a good solution.

- Chiara Alvisi (Bologna): The University of Bologna will start a research project to collect all information concerning legal education. Next year a conference will be organised. We invite everyone to cooperate.

- Jurgen Kohler: The stance of ELFA is not very clear in the letter. Is the Bologna model adaptable for our purposes? Is the message para 1 or para 2 of this letter? And the Masters referred to, is this the Bologna Masters? My personal feeling lies in part two of this letter, saying that the Bologna model is adaptable to our needs. We agree that the Bachelors cannot give access to legal professions. The LLB alone is not enough. So the real question is to see if 3+2 is viable and that after these 5 years there must be an extra phase of apprenticeship, and what the interfaces are between the LLB and the LLM. The key element of mobility will be after the LLB, so the interface must be well defined. Should the LLB be more general rather then more country-oriented, since the later would give problems concerning recognition? We also need to talk about workload and not about years. We need to talk about qualities.

- Walter Stoffel (Fribourg): In Switzerland most law schools already have a 3+1 or a 3+1 ½ structure. The total duration is 4 to 5 years. Students have to pass a Bar exam after 2 years of apprenticeship. What the Bar will do is unclear. We think that they will continue to require the Masters for access to the Bar. Probably the Bar will leave the question open, but this is not sure. Switzerland has a limited number of people who go to university, the system is not completely open. Years at university level cannot be compared. What Bologna does is to formalise the discussion by looking at years. That does probably mean that those law schools in Europe who will bring their students to access to the Bar after 3 years will win the race. It may be that other universities will start doing the same. We have to take into account that Bologna focuses on a formal element and that we have to get used to it. So we should do our best job after 3 years even if we think that a 4^th year is necessary.

- Norbert Olszak: The problem does not lie in the 3 or 5 years, but in the number of credits and the crucial thing is how fast students get these credits. This gives a problem of competition. Some students could do it in 2 years. Others will take 10 years.

- Hilmar Fenge (Hannover): There are different versions of the letter, the translations are not always the same. This can be seen in point 3. What should we do with the letter? I think that point 1 and 2 are quite compatible with what has been said here.

- Frans Vanistendael: One point on which we all agree is that a pure LLB does not give access to the Bar. With respect to the discussion about access to the profession, what had been emerging here is that we are aware that there are two models. The UK and Ireland have opted for very general education at first, and then in a second step geared to the national system. Most continental countries have the same mix, but done within the university and not within the profession. Also most continental countries start out with the national system. If we take the overall picture, I think all the systems in Europe agree that in order to have access you need general education and more specific education geared to the national situation; this is included in point 2. In fact we should leave the option open to the European universities because this is a case of competition. This of course means that we have to stick to our position in point 2, that after 5 years there is access to the profession, and that we have to accept the consequences of this. There is one problem: exchange is very difficult when you are focusing on narrow legal education on national legal systems. It is easier to exchange when your are engaged in academic education in a general way. As far as the titles are concerned, it would be useful to specify what we mean. With respect to the workload in one year, you have years of 6 months and you have years of 12 months. It is important that we allow European youth to be educated between a certain age and at the same time to have time off. This is important because work pressures are mounting for everyone. We should emphasise our social para in the letter. If you have very good students you do not have to do much. The big challenge is to take an ordinary student and to make a good lawyer of him/her. And that is something that pure market competition is not able to achieve.

- Krystian Complak: In Poland we are now facing a reform of the access between secondary and higher education. The secondary school will determine the access to higher education. Up till now there are entrance exams, but in 3 or 4 years this system will be eliminated in favour of access based on school results. This is the novelty in Poland. If we would like to maintain the logic of the system we should insist on introducing the same system for access to the profession. In Poland many students are already involved in law firms. They acquire professional skills during their studies, often without pay. For these students an additional requirement for professional skills training is nonsense.

- Jacek Petzel (Warsaw): I completely agree that we have nothing to do with what happens after the studies. We can have some wishes but that is all. I, however, disagree with the 3+2 concept. At least we can agree on 4 years, and 1 year for a Masters. We must stress that there must be no limits for studies, but also Erasmus and Socrates do not work that well. Concerning financing, in some countries there is mixed financing. This is excellent. We are somehow in a better position than in the West since Western universities are publicly financed.

- Julian Lonbay: We can’t regulate the access to the Bar. Also, Bologna does not require a 2 year Masters. We do have quite extensive information on training on the Elixir website. However, it would be useful to get information on the non-member States. Para 6 indicates that ELFA wants to undertake enquiries, in particular on the marking systems. We need to understand how these operate. To help assist in that process we created a discussion board and one on Elixir will be opened.

Conclusions

The main points that came up in the discussion were the access to legal professions, and the implementation of the Bachelor, LLM and Master degrees. Much attention was paid to the issue of competition between universities that could result from the implementation of the Bologna Declaration.

In the discussion some clear common issues appeared. It was decided that the Board would redraft the paper in the form of a statement, taking into account the comments that came up in the discussion. Afterwards the paper will be made available on the internet.