Where Russian Lawyers Come From?

Three Types of Legal Education in Russia

Aryna Dzmitryieva, Institute for the Rule of Law (European University at St Petersburg), Researcher

Timur Bocharov, Institute for the Rule of Law (European University at St Petersburg), Researcher

Abstract

Russian legal education was boosted after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the rapid extensive growth resulted

in severe segmentation of legal education providers. The article discusses three types of law schools, namely elite, mass,

and departmental law schools. These types of schools can be differentiated based on teaching staff, approaches to

instruction methods, and content of teaching. The analysis uses survey data of 460 law school teachers and more than 20

interviews and group discussions to understand the current state of legal education.

Introduction

It is hard to overestimate the importance of legal education for the development of post-socialist countries. These countries

faced similar challenges after the collapse of the Eastern bloc. One of their primary goals was to construct an entirely new

legal culture and a new consciousness of lawyers which would better reflect the changing social and economic realities. 1

The most direct way to achieve this goal is to reform the system of legal education. In this regard, legal education is one

of the fundamental elements of the transition to democratic regimes. 2 As Helle Blomquist puts it, 'a transformation from

totalitarian to democratic law requires the training of lawyers who regard the duality of right and duties as their intellectual

baggage, lawyers that moreover would respect the rule of law in their rejection of its subjection to political influence'.3

Therefore, increasing access to legal education and improving its quality are necessary and reasonable steps towards

democratic reforms and establishing the rule of law in post-Soviet Russia.4

Russia is currently experiencing an unprecedented growth of legal education if we look at the number of graduates solely.

While there were only 16.2 thousand law school graduates in the USSR in 1989, their number had increased almost

1
Christopher Kelley and Julija Kiršienė. 2015. ‘‘The Role of Ethics in Legal Education of Post-Soviet Countries.’’ Baltic Journal of Law & Politics 8:
139-164.
2
Brian Tamanaha. 2011. ‘‘The Primacy of Society and the Failures of Law and Development.’’ Cornell International Law Journal 44: 209-248.
3
Helle Blomquist. 2004. ‘’Legal Education, Profession and Society Transition: Reform of Lithuanian Legal Education.’’ Review of Central and East
European Law 29: 46.
4
Gianmaria Ajani. 1997. ‘’Legal Education in Russia: Present and Future - An Analysis of the State Educational Standards for Higher Professional
Instruction and a Comparison with the European Legal Education Reform Experience.’’ Review of Central and East European Law 23: 267-300.
tenfold and reached 150 thousand graduates by 2012.5 The centrally-planned Soviet economy required a relatively limited

number of lawyers, primarily employed in the public sector. However, the late 1980s - early 1990s reforms have caused

a need for lawyers of a new kind capable of working in the changed socio-economic conditions. Consequently, law

schools were expected to train more students in professional skills, facilitating orientation in the emerging market

institutions. This market demand inevitably led to a substantial extension of legal education in Russia. There was also a

reciprocal movement from the supply side. For universities is was relatively easy to invest in low capital demanding

specialties such as law compared to capital-intensive engineering or science. Moreover, the growth of law school provided

jobs to former teachers of Marxism-Leninism who became teachers of legal theory or philosophy of law.

Nevertheless, the current boom in legal education does not translate into sustainable democratic institutions and a trustable

legal system. On the contrary, one can observe biased judicial decision-making and a low level of independence of the

Russian judiciary,6 ineffective judgment enforcement, 7 and a lack of qualified legal assistance.8 There is generally a lack

of trust in the Russian society's court system, which national surveys indicate.9 It appears that legal education serves only

as a formal entrance ticket to the legal profession in Russia. Still, it does not ensure a high level of competence and

adherence to the rule of law.

All this leads to heavy criticism of the current situation with legal education in Russia. It seems that there is a consensus

among scholars that Russian legal education suffers serious problems. 10 For example, Dmitry Maleshin emphasizes the

poor quality of the teaching staff and underdeveloped research activity at law schools.11 This deplorable situation,

according to Maleshin, results in the devaluation of law degrees and a critical decrease in the quality of legal education.

The discussion of legal education has expanded far beyond academic circles. The concerns about the poor quality of

Russian legal education can be observed at the level of political elites 12 and within the professional legal community.13

5
Ekaterina Moiseeva. 2015. Iuridicheskoe obrazovanie v Rossii: Analiz kolichestvennakh dannykh [Legal education in Russia: An analysis of qualitative
data]. St. Petersburg, Russia: Institut Problem Pravoprimeneniia.
6
Vadim Volkov and Aryna Dzmitryieva. 2015. ‘‘Recruitment Patterns, Gender, and Professional Subcultures of the Judiciary in Russia.’’ International
Journal of the Legal Profession 22: 166-192; Timur Bocharov et al. 2018. Proposals for Improving the Judicial System in the Russian Federation.
Moscow, Centre for Strategic Research.
7
Timur Bocharov, Alexey Knorre and Katerina Guba. 2017. Ispolnenie sudebnyh reshenij i organizacija raboty sudebnyh pristavov [Execution of Court
Decisions and Organisation of Bailiff’s Work]. Moscow, Centre for Strategic Research.
8
Ekaterina Moiseeva and Timur Bocharov. 2020. ‘‘The Professional Portrait of Russian Advocates: Market Challenges and Boundary Work.’’ In
Richard Abel et al., eds., Lawyers in society 30 years on. Oxford, Hart Publishing, 331-352.
9
For example, according to the survey conducted by the Fund of Public Opinion (FOM) in 2020, only 25% of respondents assessed the work of the
Russian judicial system positively, 45% think that Russian courts frequently render unfair judgments, and 51% agree with the statement that most
Russian judges take bribes. At https://fom.ru/Bezopasnost-i-pravo/14459, accessed 13 August, 2021.
10
E.g. Marina Kurkchiyan. 2018. “The Professionalization of Law in the Context of the Russian Legal Tradition”. In Marina Kurkchiyan and Agnieszka
Kubal, eds., A Sociology of Justice in Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Peter H. Solomon Jr., and Todd S. Foglesong. 2000. Courts and
Transition in Russia: The Challenge of Judicial Reform. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
11
Dmitry Maleshin. 2017. ‘’The Crisis of Russian Legal Education in Comparative Perspective.’’ Journal of Legal Education 66.2: 289-308.
12
President Dmitry Medvedev’s statement at the meeting with the board members of the Russian Lawyers Association. At
http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/3775, accessed 13 August, 2021.
13
Henry Reznik. 2013. ‘’Pravovaja reforma i advokatura’’ [Legal Reform and Advocacy]. In V. Mozolin, ed., Pravovaja reforma v Rossii: vosem' let
spustja [Legal Reform in Russia: Eight Years On]. LUM.
Moreover, the arguments about the decline of vocational education in Russia were put forward even in the recent

Constitutional Court's judgment (a dissenting opinion).14

Is the situation with legal education in Russia that problematic? Still, there are certain marks of positive changes and

accomplishments in this area. For example, Russian law students won several international student competitions over

recent years.15 This presumably means that they possess knowledge and skills, which allow them to compete on an equal

footing with foreign law students. Some Russian law graduates manage to build successful careers in Western law firms16.

Furthermore, some Russian law schools started to offer double degrees in law in collaboration with foreign universities.17

However, these achievements are hardly representative of all Russian law schools. There is currently a great variety of

higher education institutions (HEI) providing legal training in Russia. These institutions include law faculties of

traditional universities, technical institutions, law academies, and so-called departmental (vedomstvennye) institutions.

Kathryn Hendley found that views and values of law school graduates in Russia are far from homogenous. 18 She argues

that the most evident distinction is found between graduates oriented on private practice and graduates oriented on

working for the state. The former group of graduates are more skeptical towards the existent political regime and strongly

support strengthening the rule of law. The latter group is more loyal to the state and values formal legality over the rule

of law. We suggest in this article that some of these differences can be conditioned by legal training in various law schools.

It can be hypothesized that different types of law schools have a different impact on the Russian legal profession.

Consequently, this article aims to examine the differences in teaching staff and teaching process in Russian law schools.

It also indicates the critical implications of these differences on the Russian legal profession and the justice system.

The article proceeds as follows. We begin by discussing the data collection methods and explaining the complications we

faced at this stage. Next, we explore the general trends of legal education and determine three types of law schools in

Russia. The following section focuses on the teaching staff of law schools. Thereupon we turn our attention to differences

14
The dissenting opinion of the Justice Aranovsky in the Judgement of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation 31-P of 8 October, 2019.
15
The students of the Moscow State University won Philipp Gessop competition on international law in 2012, the students of the Higher School of
Economics won William Wis completion on international arbitration in 2018, and the students of the Moscow State University won FDI Moot
competition on investment arbitration law in 2018. See in Irina Kondratieva. Pervye sredi luchshih: studenty MGU pobedili v mezhdunarodnom
konkurse po investarbitrazhu [The First among the Best: MSU students won an international completion on investment arbitration]. Pravo.ru. 15
November, 2018, At https://pravo.ru/story/206785/, accessed 13 August, 2021.
16
For example, Russian associates and partners working for Western law firms are on the top in Chambers Lawyers Rankings for Russia. At
https://chambers.com/legal-guide/global-2, accessed 13 August, 2021.
17
It is worth mentioning a master program with Manchester University in Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, a master program with
Hamburg University in St Petersburg State University, and master programs with Université Paris 1 Panthéon – Sorbonne, Universität zu Köln,
Université du Luxembourg, London Metropolitan University, and Tilburg University in Higher School of Economics.
18
Kathryn Hendley. 2019. "Nature versus Nurture: A Comparison of Russian Law Graduates Destined for State Service and for Private Practice." Law
& Policy 41.2: 147-173.
in teaching among three types of law school. In conclusion, we consider the consequences of the fragmented legal

education for the legal profession in Russia.

Methods and Data

A distinctive feature of our study is the combination of qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques and analysis.

At the first stage, we intended to create a balanced sample of institutions based on the secondary data available from the

official Internet portal 'Russian Education.'19 Drawing on this data, we could infer necessary information for breaking

down all Russian law schools by type. We maintained representativeness by property type and specialization.

Surprisingly, it was highly problematic to obtain access to the field. We contacted heads of law schools in different regions

via email and supplemented this by phone calls. The response rate was meager, and the acceptance rate was zero. As a

result, none of the heads of schools opened a door for our research. The alternative strategy to enter the field through key

gatekeepers proved itself better. We finally managed to get access to 29 law schools where we surveyed teaching

personnel. The distribution of these law schools by type is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Survey sample

Types of educational Number of institutions Number of institutions in the Number of

institutions (2013) survey respondents

Total 969 29 460 (100)

Mass 945 23 342 (74.3)

Elite 4 3 68 (14.8)

Departmental 21 3 50 (10.9)

The respondents could answer an electronic questionnaire managed via the Survey Monkey system or a paper-based

questionnaire. It turned out that the paper-based questionnaire was a more comfortable form for the majority of the

respondents. Altogether, we collected 460 questionnaires. The results were further statistically analyzed.

We also conducted five focus groups and 18 interviews with one or two teachers in nine universities in six Russian

regions. Qualitative data were beneficial as they allowed our respondents to reflect on their working practices and

biographical stories. The interviews were mainly concentrated on respondents' values, norms, and routines and the most

19
This educational portal was created in 2002. At https://edu.ru/abitur, accessed 13 August, 2021.
salient events of their professional careers. In contrast, the group discussions were more directed to organizational work

practices and the content of educational and research activities. The interviews typically lasted about forty-five to sixty

minutes, and group discussions were a bit longer. They were recorded, transcribed, and subsequently coded and analyzed

using NVivo. The analysis was focused on commonalities and differences in teachers' experiences.

Three Types of Law Schools in Russia

This research identifies three types of law schools in Russia – law departments at elite and mass universities and

departmental (vedomstvennye) law schools. Although a more detailed classification is possible, 20 law schools of these

three types demonstrate the most substantial differences in their approaches to recruiting staff and teaching law.

Consequently, these three types of law schools are likely to prepare different groups of lawyers. First, there is a sub-group

representing a relatively small number of lawyers who graduate from elite law schools. It is primarily these students who

regularly win international competitions and build later their careers in top Russian and foreign law firms. The bulk of

students, however, graduate from mass law schools. This large group of students is not as competitive on the market as

the first group. Supposedly, only a minor part of their graduates joins the legal profession afterward21. And finally, there

is a group of law graduates who finish departmental law schools under the patronage of law enforcement agencies. These

schools are supposed to prepare personnel for agencies such as procuracy, police forces, and the penal system. To a large

extent, the training there is designed to cultivate technical skills and loyalty to the state rather than critical thinking and

adherence to human rights. These three types of law schools are discussed in greater detail below.

Mass Law Schools

According to Martin Trow, national higher education systems can be divided into elite systems (less than 15% of school

graduates study at universities), mass systems enrolling between 15 and 40%, and universal systems, where more than

40% are enrolled22. The Russian system of higher education can be described as a mass system. Mass universities serve

as channels of vertical mobility for the general population of Russia. Nevertheless, the growth of law schools described

above produces a reasonable question, whether all these universities are capable of providing high-quality education. For

individuals and employers, the growth of higher education results in the devaluation of diplomas. They are no longer

considered with much respect and do not automatically guarantee employment.

20
Ekaterina Moiseeva, for example, suggests the typology which includes law schools at classical universities, departmental HEI, specialised law HEI,
law schools at other humanitarian HEI, law schools at technical HEI. See in Ekaterina Moiseeva. Iuridicheskoe obrazovanie v Rossii: Analiz
kolichestvennakh dannykh.
21
Bocharov, T., & Dzmitryieva, A. (2021). Legal Education in Russia and Abroad: Between University, Profession, State, and Market. Norma : INFRA-
M.
22
Trow M. 1974. Problems in the Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education / OECD. Policies for Higher Education. Paris: OECD. P. 51–101.
In transitional and developing countries, the general trend of growth in the production of lawyers is even stronger than in

countries with developed state institutions.23 This trend is explained by the poor institutions that induce demand for legal

knowledge even among those who will never practice law. The longitudinal data suggests that as much as half of the law

graduates do not practice law.24 In 2018, only about a quarter of those who have law diplomas constituted the core of the

legal profession (i.e., they worked as attorneys, prosecutors, judges, or legal counsels), about 13% performed mobility

upward, and the rest (about 40%) occupy jobs below their formal qualification. Although many law graduates never

practice law, the demand for legal education remains stable and gender-balanced, which signifies this education's prestige.

Elite Law Schools

Law schools in old elite universities even strengthen their role with the advancement of the mass universities. Elite

universities are characterized by a high concentration of talents and resources. They can ensure a high level of teaching

and research and select the best students. Despite the expansion of mass education in Russia, old traditional educational

institutions sustained and continue to be an essential source of providing symbolic, cultural, social, and economic capital.

Only one of the recently founded law schools (in the Higher School of Economics) has managed to earn a place among

elite universities lately. As organizations, elite universities in Russia enjoy better founding and more autonomy. These

universities are prone to intergenerational transfer and therefore are less available for outsiders. 25

There can be found various lists of elite law schools in literature. For example, Hendley provides an extensive list of such

universities, including Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, Saratov Legal Academy, Urals Legal

Academy, Tomsk State University, Kutafin Moscow State Law University, and the Higher School of Economics. 26

Another study applies even a broader definition of elite universities with 74 HEI, including regional institutions with an

established reputation.27 There are also several rankings of top law schools based on the starting salary or expert evaluation

of prestige and quality of particular law schools provided by the Russian Association of Lawyers.28 Tev, in turn,

investigates the biographies of Russian top-bureaucrats and finds that the Russian political elite consists of graduates of

23
Elliott Krause. 2001. "Professional Group Power in Developing Societies." Current Sociology 49.4: 149-175.
24
Timur Bocharov and Aryna Dzmitryieva. Juridicheskoe obrazovanie v Rossii i za rubezhom: mezhdu universitetom, professiej, gosudarstvom i rynkom
[Legal education in Russia and abroad: between university, profession, state and market]. Moscow: Norma.
25
Yana Roschina. 2006. ‘’Ch'i deti uchatsja v rossijskih jelitnyh vuzah?’’ [Whose children study at Russian elite universities?] Voprosy Obrazovanija
1: 347-369.
26
Kathryn Hendley. 2020. "Assessing the Potential for Renegades among Russian Millennial Lawyers." Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet
Democratization 28.1: 148.
27
Yana Roschina.’Ch'i deti uchatsja v rossijskih jelitnyh vuzah?’’
28
The list of the accredited law schools can be found on the official web site of the Association of Russian Lawyers. At: https://alrf.ru/directions/quality-
of-legal-education/, accessed 16 August 2021.
Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, and Moscow State Institute of International Relationships.29

Maleshin's list of 'leading' Russian law schools is much shorter and, besides Moscow and St. Petersburg State Universities

and Higher School of Economics, includes only Kutafin Moscow State Law University. 30 Three schools - Lomonosov

Moscow State University, St. Petersburg University, and the Higher School of Economics - are overlapping elements of

these lists. Thus, we classified respondents of these universities as 'elite law schools' teachers.

Departmental Law Schools

The reform of higher education has not only opened the opportunity to establish private law schools in Russia. Another

trend was the extensive foundation of new departmental law schools. In the 1990s, one of the tendencies of the higher

education transformation was the establishment of dozens of departmental law schools.31 In Soviet times, only the

Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Security Committee (KGB) had their law schools. They also include law schools

under the Ministry of Internal Affairs jurisdiction, the General Prosecutor's Office, the Investigative Committee, the

Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), etc.

These law schools are spread all around the country and play a crucial role in providing the workforce with different state

jobs. They compete for students and funding with the other two types of law schools. The previous study shows that for

a professional group of investigators, the share of holders of a diploma of a classical university is twice as high as

departmental law schools32. However, among the youngest cohort of investigators, the proportion of those who graduated

from departmental law schools reaches 51%. Thus, the popularity of departmental legal education is gradually increasing.

The students of these law schools are formally enrolled in the service of the relevant authorities and wear shoulder straps

during their training. The departmental law schools are attractive to students in many ways. First, they are state-owned,

and students receive state scholarships and other social benefits there. The share of budget-funded places in departmental

law schools is much higher than in civilian universities. If in 2012 only 21% of departmental law school students paid

their fees, there were around 60-70% of such students in other types of law schools.33 Second, young people are guaranteed

employment at a state agency that patronizes a respective departmental law school. But these guarantees are not costless.

In return, the students of departmental law school need to work for the state for at least five years. Otherwise, they will

need to compensate the state for the expenses it bore for their education. Third, departmental law schools also provide an

29
Denis Tev. 2015. ‘’Jelitnoe vysshee obrazovanie: glavnye kuznicy vysokopostavlennyh administratorov za rubezhom i v Rossii.’’
30
Dmitry Maleshin, ‘’The Crisis of Russian Legal Education in Comparative Perspective’’
31
They are all called ‘departmental law schools’ here for the sake of convenience.
32
Kirill Titaev and Maria Shklyaruk. Rossijskie sledovateli: prizvanie, professija, povsednevnost'.
33
Ekaterina Moiseeva. Iuridicheskoe obrazovanie v Rossii: Analiz kolichestvennakh dannykh.
opportunity to receive legal education to those officials who do not hold a law degree under the so-called 'fast track'

(uskorennoe) or by correspondence.

It is difficult to estimate the share of such law schools in the overall structure of legal education at the moment. The

Ministry of Education has not collected or published statistics on this segment for a long time. The latest data are available

only for 2012 when 39 out of 950 HEI providing legal education were classified as departmental. So, such law schools

accounted for about 4% of all educational institutions that train lawyers. This share seems to be relatively small if one

does not consider that admission to departmental law schools is more widespread than that of civilian law schools. As a

result, the number of students (cadets) of departmental law schools is 11% of all law students in the country. It turns out

that every tenth graduate lawyer has gone through the departmental training system.

Let us now discuss the main differences in teaching staff and teaching process at these three types of Russian law schools.

Teaching Staff of Russian Law Schools

Demographic Profile of Law Teachers: Gender and Age

The academic profession cannot be understood without considering such factors as gender and age since they 'determine

the professional culture of professors no less than the epistemological characteristics of the knowledge industry'.34

Our survey strongly suggests that socio-demographic characteristics are not universal across different types of law

schools. Male professors prevail in elite law schools, while the gender breakdown is somewhat biased towards women in

law schools at mass universities (Table 2).

Table 2. Demographic characteristics of law teachers

Types of law schools

Mass universities Elite Departmental Total

Male** 39.0 61.8 47.8 43

Age***

Below 30 16.1 2.9 11.1 13.6

30-39 28.1 35.3 48.9 31.2

34
Ludwig Huber. 1990. Disciplinary Cultures and Social Reproduction. European Journal of Education 25: 243.
 40-49 22.2 20.6 20 21.8

50-59 13.2 7.4 15.6 12.5

60-65 4.1 2.9 0 3.5

Above 65 16.4 30.9 4.4 17.4

This is likely to indicate not the increased access of women to positions in the university but rather the lack of demand

for these positions from men due to the low salary. At the same time, mature men (65+ y.o.) represent the previous

generation, when the proportion of men among university professors was higher. This cohort continues to work in

universities even after retirement. In terms of legal education, the general trend of feminization of the teaching staff, to

varying degrees, affected universities of a different type. It manifests itself most strongly in mass universities. There only

slightly more than a third of the teachers are men. The gender breakdown of elite universities emphasizes their status:

most men (61.8%) – almost 1.5 times more than in general by law faculties (Table 1). The gender breakdown of teachers

in departmental law schools is slightly more balanced than the average for all law schools. The share of men in them is

47.8%. At these universities, retired law enforcement officers, predominantly men, often work as teachers (instructors).

In addition to feminization, age disparities have also emerged due to the transformation in the higher education system.

In the early-mid 2000s, there was a critical decline in middle-aged teachers (practically the entire generation of the mid-

1950s and 1960s left universities in the early 1990s)35. According to our survey, by the end of the 2010s, the situation

began to level out. The average age of the teachers of legal subjects is 41.2 years, and the median is 37 years. This

indicates that the acute generational gaps, noticeable in the 2000s, began to decrease. Those young people who occupied

rapidly emptying teaching positions in the mid-2000s have reached middle age. Nevertheless, the distorting processes

that determined the main trends in higher education in the 1990s and 2000s continue to influence law schools' gender and

age composition. There was also a critical decline in middle-aged faculty throughout the higher education system:

virtually the entire generation of the mid-1950s-1960s left universities in the early 1990s.36 Above mentioned statement

that in the 1990-2000s mid-aged generation of professors was drained out is correct for elite law schools but also evident

at mass and departmental law schools.

Remarkably, the youngest generation is underrepresented in elite law schools. There is a negative tendency for a shortage

of middle-aged teaching personnel, and the shortfall of teachers of the most productive age is most noticeable. In elite

universities, there is a relatively high proportion of teachers over 65 years old. Still, the ratio of teachers under 30 years

35
Mikhail Sokolov et al. 2015. Kak stanovjatsja professorami: issledovanie akademicheskih kar'er v pjati stranah [How does one become a professor:
a study of academic careers in five countries]. Moscow: New Literature Review.
36
Mikhail Sokolov et al. 2015. Kak stanovjatsja professorami: issledovanie akademicheskih kar'er v pjati stranah [How does one become a professor:
a study of academic careers in five countries]. Moscow: New Literature Review.
of age is extremely small compared with mass and departmental law schools. Thus, the generational replacement of

teachers occurs more slowly in the leading metropolitan universities than in other educational institutions. Working in

elite universities is quite prestigious. This can be seen from the gender distribution of teachers in elite universities. Male

professors in them co-put two-thirds. Moreover, the predominance or at least the balance of men and women remains in

all age groups, except 50-59 years old. Thus due to the transformation of the 1990s, the number of graduate students and

young male teachers in elite universities has decreased, but young people still see them as desirable places of work.

Educational Background of Law Teachers

At the beginning of the 1990s, Lisa Granik remarked that '[t]he students simply need an education; the faculty, a re-

education.'37 The past thirty years showed that law teachers hardly could reach a high level of qualification. There are two

problems of modern legal education in Russia. First, the demographic crisis noted earlier. In elite law schools, the

proportion of doctors of sciences is high. Still, they are senior people, while the number of graduate students teaching at

these faculties is relatively modest. Another problem relates to the quality of postgraduate education and the level of

research in theses.

A shortage of qualified teaching staff accompanied the rapid growth of legal education at the beginning of the 1990s.

There were not enough law graduates to fill all teaching positions that had been opening at that time. To answer the

demand for law professors, many decided to obtain legal education by correspondence.

The proportion of lecturers who received undergraduate legal education by correspondence is relatively high among older

teachers of mass and departmental universities. Still, it is not usual for teachers of elite universities (Table 3).

Table 3. The qualification characteristics of teaching staff by types of education institutions

Types of higher education institutions

Mass Elite Departmental Total

How did you receive higher legal education

Full time 69,9 83 69,6 71,6

Academic degree

No 15,8 7,1 10 14

37
Lisa Granik. 1993. ‘’Legal Education in Post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine.’’ Oregon Law Review 72: 968.
Not yet, but I am a 14,8 5,4 6 12,6

postgraduate student

Candidate of science 60,6 62,5 74 62,4

Doctor of science 8,8 25 10 11

Academic mobility

I graduated from the 58,7 62 43,2 57,6

same university

Universities to fulfill their teaching and research function need highly qualified staff. Thus, they prefer hiring teachers

who obtained postgraduate education, which in Russia can be awarded at two levels: candidate of science (somewhat

equivalent of Ph.D.) or doctor of science degree granted to the researcher at advanced stages of their career. However,

about 30% of the teaching staff at mass universities do not hold any postgraduate degree, and only half of them are

enrolled at postgraduate school (aspirantura). The situation is the opposite in elite universities, where about a quarter of

teachers obtained the highest scientific degree available in Russia - doctor of science.

In departmental universities, the situation with qualified staff is also better than in mass universities in terms of quantity

but not necessarily quality. The departmental law schools are often criticized for the excessively narrow focus on

specialized subjects and negligence of modern research. The teaching staff of these universities is mainly composed of

former officers. They possess rich practical experience but lack thorough knowledge of law and doctrine.

In Russia, postgraduate education underwent probably a more severe crisis than other spheres of education. Structural

changes and explosive growth of demand for legal education resulted in the deficit for teachers with the appropriate level

of qualification. It was relatively easy to find a job in academia, and although it was not highly paid, it remained attractive

in many ways. However, conducting academic research was rarely a reason for entering postgraduate school. Instead,

incentives other than research motivated students to obtain an academic degree. The school dean invites talented graduates

to continue their academic careers and offers social benefits (most often a room in a dormitory for postgraduates). Entering

postgraduate school for male university graduates was also a way to postpone or avoid military service. Simultaneously,

the demand for an academic degree emerged among politicians and state officials. For them holding an academic degree
was a symbol of status.38 All these created a corrupted system and resulted in the devaluation of academic degrees and

the development of widespread plagiarism and other forms of violation of the principles of academic ethics.

These general trends were particularly evident in the field of legal education. For example, by 2018, the Dissernet

initiative evaluated plagiarism in 7251 dissertations and found that 829 of them were in law.39 This initiative also

identified 'dissertation manufactures' — institutions where plagiarism was detected in many dissertations defended there.

Six of twenty-one departmental universities appeared in the list of 'dissertation manufactures'.40 Another study identified

that the share of plagiarized text in dissertations in law ranged from 4 to 67%, with the average equalling 28%.41

The low level of academic mobility in Russian higher education is often considered as a problem that leads to the closure

of the teacher in the field of local traditions and approaches, the dependence on local social networks, increase of the risk

of methodological errors, and the loss of a critical view of the object of research 42. Academic mobility is understood as

any change in career trajectory: moving from one university to another, changing the direction of scientific activity,

moving up the career ladder, and leaving research and teaching activities.

Mobility of Law Teachers

In Russia, academic mobility is rare. More than half of surveyed teachers work at the same university where they received

their higher education. Academic inbreeding is rampant at mass law schools. Recent graduates who start teaching at their

law schools find themselves overloaded with teaching and administrative obligations, as well as extracurricular activities.

Instead of doing research, mastering new pedagogical techniques, participating in conferences and seminars, young

teachers are not perceived by their colleagues in the complete sense of the word. They are forced to 'take students to

theatres to develop their personality' (teacher, interview No. 1).

The positive aspects of academic inbreeding include an intense emotional commitment to the university and the

opportunity to preserve the best university traditions. However, the adverse effects outweigh the positives. Negative

consequences of academic inbreeding include the inability to hire the best candidates, limited opportunities to carry out

38
Ararat Osipian. 2010. ‘’Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme: Political Corruption of Russian Doctorates.’’ Demokratizatsiya 18(3): 260-280.
39
Dissernet. 2018. Akademicheskaja etika i sistema nauchnoj attestatsii v Rossii: osnovnye problemy i predlozhenija po ih resheniju [Academic ethics
and the system of academic attestation in Russia: main problems and suggestions for their resolution]. At: http://wiki.dissernet.org/tools/Docs/doklady-
disserneta-may-2018.pdf, accessed 16 August 2021.
40
ibid.
41
Nadezhda Sokolova and Katerina Guba. 2020.‘’Nekorrektnye zaimstvovanija v rossijskih doktorskih dissertacijah: skol'ko, gde i u kogo?’’
[Plagiarism in Russian PhD dissertations: how many, where and whose?] Mir Rossii 2: 38.
42
Yudkevich, М., Altbaсh F., & Rabley, L. (Eds.). (2016). Academic Inbreeding and Mobility in Higher Education. M.
reforms and organizational innovations, and the strengthening of the university hierarchy. This contributes to maintaining

the status quo and negative dynamics of power relations in universities. Along with the high pedagogical workload, this

fact partly explains the low academic productivity of Russian teachers43.

Low academic mobility can have various reasons: a lack of resources for relocation, strong social ties with colleagues at

university, and professionalization within a particular research tradition, which makes it impossible to go beyond its

boundaries.

Secondary Employment of Law Teachers

Insufficient funding for universities, low salaries, and demand for the competence of lawyers from state and business

motivated teachers to take the second job while keeping their position at university. Working at universities guaranteed

prestige and stability of employment. Secondary employment was necessary for the improvement of living standards. In

the early 2000s, workers in science and education more often had both regular and irregular earnings than other

professionals44

For academic and teaching work, secondary employment has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand,

secondary employment reduces time and energy that teachers could invest in developing courses, preparing for classes,

reading academic literature, writing articles, and communicating with students. On the other hand, additional

employment, especially in the field of practice, enriches a teacher with new knowledge, deepens her specialization, or,

on the contrary, expands her horizons.

Our survey suggests that compared to the early 2000s, fewer people have secondary employment. Two-thirds work only

at the university. Those who work somewhere besides the university are employed as in-house lawyers in a business

organization or lawyers in a law firm. Only a few teachers have state jobs in prosecution or court or occupy other

governmental jobs.

Three types of law schools demonstrate different patterns of employment. Only two-thirds of teachers at mass law schools

have a full-time contract, whereas the rest work on part-time or hourly-based contracts. Elite law schools have more

resources and can ensure their teachers with competitive salaries. As a result, more than 90% of teachers work on a full-

43
Olga Gorelova and Andrey Lovakov. “Academic Inbreeding and Research Productivity of Russian Faculty Members.”
44
Inna Nazarova. Prepodavateli jekonomicheskih disciplin: professional'nyj potencial, osobennosti zanjatosti i trudovoj motivacii
time contract. Departmental law schools have approximately the same rate of full-time workers but for other reasons.

Teachers at departmental law schools are usually those who retired from service, and their income also includes pension.

Regulatory requirements and the labor market are pushing for the hiring of part-time faculty members. However, teachers

themselves believe that it is essential for the teacher to focus on academic work to maintain high-quality teaching (Table

4).

Table 4. The attitudes towards teachers practicing law

Type of law school

With which statement do you agree?** Mass Elite Departmental Total

A practicing lawyer who teaches law ignores important 13,9 13 16,7 14,1

theoretical issues. (n=57)

A practicing lawyer can teach only certain subjects and 68,9 75,9 50 67,6

some narrow courses, but most subjects require a teacher

working predominantly in academia. (n=273)

Only a practicing lawyer prepares students capable of 17,2 11,1 33,3 18,3

starting working right after finishing law school. (n=74)

Lecturers at elite law schools are more focused on an academic approach and believe that it has an advantage over the

practice. The practitioners, in turn, should be invited to lecture only in specialized narrow subjects. At the same time, one-

third of the teachers of departmental law schools highly appreciate the capabilities of teachers with practical experience

since only they can prepare a specialist who can start working immediately after graduation. Although beneficial for

students, hiring teachers with practical experience can be problematic for law schools because the remuneration they can

offer does not match the job market level.

Few are ready to engage in this activity weekly because there is no motivation for remuneration because it

is not the one that you want to receive for your work (teacher of a classical university, interview No. 15)

In interviews, faculty teachers and managers noted that inviting only the most experienced practitioners with extensive

teaching experience makes sense, but faculties cannot offer them decent wages. Thus, it remains only to rely on the

enthusiasm of such teachers and the prestige of the academic profession.

Teaching Process at Russian Law Schools

The content of legal education remains one of the most important and discussed issues at all levels. Should teaching be

focused on learning doctrine or on acquiring practical skills? What should be the ratio of different subjects? What is the

role of general humanitarian and special subjects? How to master practical skills - through seminars, through legal clinics,

or practice in future workplaces? This is an incomplete list of questions that state education regulators, universities, and

teachers are trying to answer for themselves.

In the field of legal education, educational standards and training requirements can be influenced by many factors. For

example, in Russia, ideas about the model for training lawyers are primarily determined by the state, which forms state

educational standards that are mandatory for all educational institutions, regardless of ownership and departmental

affiliation.

The early 1990s were marked not only by the growth in demand for legal education. Legal education also needed reform

to meet the demands of a market economy, the emerging private business, the changed relations in civil law, and

eventually a changed ideology. Whereas until the early 1990s, training in criminal law and criminal procedure prevailed

in legal education, and a significant part of graduates with legal training were future law enforcement officers, then, in

the new conditions, it was necessary to adapt training programs to the market environment.

Curriculum and State Standards

The curriculum and approach to teaching did not change much compared to the Soviet times. Soviet educational programs

contained knowledge of general scientific and ideological subjects (logic, physics, political economics, scientific atheism,

etc.) and the courses on the theory and history of law. They all wore the obligatory character. Such a large volume of non-

legal courses strongly distinguished the Soviet model from the comparable programs in American and European

universities.45 This bias has been preserved in the post-Soviet period up to the present time. However, some courses were

replaced by less ideological ones such as political science, philosophy, history of socio-political doctrines, economics.46

However, for developing a professional group, as Abbott shows, the balance between abstract and concrete knowledge is

always essential.47 Due to the fundamental nature of the Soviet and later Russian education, the lawyers were forced to

acquire practical skills already directly on the job.

45
George Glos. 1989. “Soviet Law and Soviet Legal Education in an Historical Context: An Interpretation”. Review of Socialist Law 15: 227-270.
46
Peter Sahlas and Carl Chastenay. 1998. “Russian Legal Education: Post-Communist Stagnation or Revival?” Journal of Legal Education 48(2): 194-
215.
47
Andrew Abbott. 1988. System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Labour. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
The full autonomy in developing their curricula was given only to elite universities.48 Survey responses and expert

interviews indicate pretty significant differences between teachers of elite, mass, and departmental law schools in their

assessments of the degree of regulation of programs for the training of lawyers and the degree of freedom of an individual

teacher when developing their courses.

The principal regulations are Federal State Educational Standards (FSES) and professional standards for a lawyer,

enshrined in the All-Russian Classifier of Specialties in Education (OCSO), approved by the State Standard. At present,

Russian legal education is regulated by the Standard 3++, which introduces a competency-based approach. This approach

implies that, upon mastering the program, a graduate lawyer should not only receive a set of knowledge but also have the

competencies to engage in professional activities after graduation. These include both universal competencies (for

example, critical thinking, financial literacy, citizenship, etc.) and professional (for example, legal writing or

interpretation of law). The competence approach guides the structure of educational programs at universities. A Bachelor's

degree educational program contains a compulsory block of professional subjects and courses aimed at developing

universal competencies. The universities themselves determine the requirements and volume of the latter. In general, the

Standards set a fairly rigid framework in which universities have limited autonomy to develop their curricula. Teachers

perceive that standards are very restricting and assert that the freedom to choose which subject should be taught is

essential.

General competencies should probably be [standardized] but professional, specialized competencies which

are written in these Standards should be at the discretion of universities (focus group with teachers of the

departmental university, No. 6)

The mandatory part of the legal education standard includes 26 courses (modules) of the professional cycle.49 In addition

to these subjects, universities may include optional subjects, but mandatory subjects should not be less than 60% of the

total amount of subjects taught. Most teachers have a distinct specialization: they teach one (44.8%) or two subjects

(28.3%), but some teach 8, 9, and even 15 compulsory courses. The teachers' workload and specialization are closely

48
The list includes the Moscow and St. Petersburg state universities, Federal Law No. 259-FZ 'On the Lomonosov Moscow State University and the
St. Petersburg State University', dated November 10, 2009, and universities with the status of federal universities or national research universities
Federal Law No. 273-FZ 'On Education in the Russian Federation', dated December 29, 2012.
49
Philosophy, history of state and law of Russia, history of state and law of foreign countries, foreign language, foreign language in the field of
jurisprudence, life safety, theory of state and law, constitutional law, administrative law, civil law, civil procedure, arbitration process, labour law,
criminal law, criminal procedure, environmental law, land law, financial law, tax law, business law, international law, private international law,
forensics, criminology, social security law, family law, information technology in legal practice. The Order of the Ministry of Science and Higher
Education of the Russian Federation of August 13, 2020 No. 1011.
correlated with the type of university and its size. The elite universities, on average, have significant human resources

and can guarantee their teachers a smaller workload with higher salaries. Specialization in one subject is typical for elite

universities (on average, one and a half subjects per teacher) compared with the two subjects on average in other

universities.

Our interviews highlight a significant difference in the way teachers from different universities evaluate the state

regulation and capacity to develop their courses. Teachers of mass and departmental law schools are constrained by

Standards, and therefore have to adapt their teaching to meet their requirements. The interviewees characterize these

requirements as 'procrustean beds', 'rigid frameworks', and similar epithets. For example, the FSES sets a maximum

annual load for a particular cycle or section of the educational program, which does not always correspond to the

universities' ideas about the number of required hours.

Our need, for example, is to increase practice hours. Furthermore, A.P. [dean] has racked his brains on how

to increase the number of hours and not exceed the annual workload. These are all the parameters, and they

don't play a very good role. Only two universities in the whole country were allowed to do everything -

Moscow State University and St. Petersburg University50 (focus group with law school teachers, No. 1).

Under existing conditions, teachers develop adaptive strategies, constantly trying to link their vision of the taught subject

and their pedagogical techniques with the rigid normative requirements of the Standards, internally disagreeing with them

and considering them only interfering with their work. Despite some efforts to extend interaction between theory and

practice, teaching remains predominantly theoretical, and the new curriculum structure is causing resistance and

dissatisfaction among many teachers.

There are certain specifics in Russian departmental law schools. As was mentioned above, graduates from these law

schools are obliged to work further in state law enforcement agencies. This predetermination of the career track affects

the value system of students and their vision of their future role in the legal system.

There are substantial differences in the educational process between departmental and ordinary 'civilian' law schools. In

general, departmental law schools have a significant proportion of physical, drill, and firepower training classes. In the

morning, a parade is carried out; students have fire training absent in ordinary law schools. This approach, in many

50
In fact, there are about 20 such universities.
respects, brings the departmental training system closer to the training model in military schools. The obligatory wearing

of a uniform only reinforces these similarities.

Unlike students of other universities, a student of a departmental law school has more clear ideas about her future career.

The departmental education already at the stage of training presupposes the incorporation of a cadet into a specific

organization where she will serve. Thus, this system contributes to the even greater fragmentation of the legal profession.

In this perspective, it is not just the division according to the type of private practice/law enforcement agencies that

matters, but specific segments within this opposition - the police, prosecutors, investigators, security agencies, and others.

On the one hand, Compulsory job assignment guarantees employment and relieves the graduate of all the problems

associated with the uncertainty of the labor market. On the other hand, our respondents admitted the negative effects of

departmental education on professional values. For example, our interviewees mentioned that study at the departmental

law schools substantially affects the students' system of norms and values.

In general, our university deforms both consciousness and legal consciousness. Let's be frank, any specific

university, a power university, deforms legal consciousness. Here, among teachers as well. Here it can be

positive or negative, but a cadet indeed perceives the surrounding reality differently than another lawyer

(teacher at a departmental university, interview No. 11).

According to our respondents and focus group participants, this often hinders critical thinking in future professional

activities.

It is difficult to expect a graduate trained in five years to be a "feldsfebel" to be creative in a preliminary

investigation or operative investigation activities (focus group with faculty members of a departmental

university, No. 6).

Finally, the departmental law schools' hidden curricula are devoted to 'preserving the existing system, rather than changing

it. As a result, the training of low-skilled specialists has become a tool for ensuring the stability of the current system'.51

51
Nodar Mosaki. 2009. ‘’Obrazovanie v vedomstvennyh vuzah’’ [Education in departmental higher education institutions]. Voprosy Obrazovanija 1:
107–118.
If we talk about education programs, their volume and depth of study differ significantly in departmental and civilian law

schools. Those respondents who have experience teaching in universities of both types remark that the share of such

subjects in departmental universities is less than in civilian universities.

I do not know what their educational standard was there, but I know for sure that in the volume in which I

teach at the university, legal subjects, they did not take (a teacher with experience in a departmental and

civilian university, interview No. 7).

However, the differences are manifested not only in the curriculum but also in the degree of freedom of students to choose

courses. While civilian law schools tend to increase the proportion of elective courses in the curriculum, the programs in

departmental law schools are much less flexible. As one of the interviewees admitted, "Our system is rigidly built. The

student is not free in the choice of subjects. Everyone, everyone learns the same standards" (teacher with experience in a

departmental and civilian university, interview No. 7).

Teaching Methods

The teaching format mainly implies lecturing in front of a large audience of students, rather than case-solving or Socratic

dialogue. This feature is often emphasized while comparing the Russian approach with an Anglo-American model of

teaching. This model of instruction was inherited to a large extent from the Soviet Union. However, this approach to legal

education is not extraordinary if we look at some European countries. In France or Germany, for example, lecture format

also prevails. Lectures, being the primary way of knowledge transferring, are supplemented by seminars. Russian law

students present and discuss read material at the seminars. In summer, students are required to obtain practical training

and get acquainted with work in the courts, prosecutor's or defense lawyer's office. However, such an 'internship' is most

often of a formal nature without the actual inclusion of students in work.

Archaic teaching technologies seem to be the most acute problem of education in the entire post-socialist space: for

example, in the Czech Republic and Poland52 and Estonia and Lithuania.53 The lecture method of teaching still prevails

with a minimal level of student involvement in the learning process. Students are not taught sufficiently academic writing

and analyzing. The introduction of new methods, such as Socratic methods, remains challenging for teachers and students

52
Michal Urban, Liubou Krasnitskaya and Katarzyna Kowalska. 2018. “Re-thinking Legal Education in Central and Eastern Europe”. In Richard
Grimes, ed., Re-thinking Legal Education under the Civil and Common Law. Abingdon: Routledge: 155–170.
53
Jaak Roosaare. 2007. “Practical Aspects of Teaching Law in Newly Independent Central Europe (Experiences in Estonia and Lithuania)”. European
Journal of Legal Education 4(2): 121–134.
who prefer a lecture format in which they are not required to participate. The size of the study groups partly explains this

neglect of new teaching methods. Enrolment in law schools reaches hundreds of people, and under such conditions, the

lecture method becomes the only possible teaching method. Seminar classes are also usually held in fairly large groups

of 20-30 people. At seminars, students repeat lecture materials, and at best, are trained to solve tests and problems.

Students must choose which law is relevant and apply it to a particular situation. In general, teachers specialize in a narrow

legal field and, as a rule, have neither sufficient pedagogical expertise nor the resources to ensure proper interaction with

the audience.

When we ask Russian teachers about their pedagogical strategies, we find that little has improved since the 1990s. In

most cases, teachers rely on textbooks and legislative acts and rarely apply scholarly research papers in their teaching

(Table 5).

Table 5. The choice of information sources for teaching

Types of higher education organization

Mass Elite Departmental Total

Codes and Legal acts** 84,2 77,4 94 84,4

Commentaries to Codes 46,2 27,4 66 45,8

and Legal Acts***

Сase law and 78,1 77,4 82 78,5

interpretation

Textbooks written by 25,8 33,9 30 27,4

local teachers

Textbooks written by 47,1 24,2 44 43,5

teachers from other

regions**

My own textbooks and 28 37,1 40 30,6

materials

Articles published in 18,2 46,8 8 21,1

foreign journals***

Articles published in 78,4 83,9 52 76,2

Russian journals***
However, elite law schools in some ways are different from others. The elite law school teachers are more prepared to

use recent academic publications and rarely draw on commentaries to legal acts written by someone else. About 46% of

teachers of elite law schools use foreign researches in their classes. Yet, this number lies significantly behind even those

European countries that demonstrate the lowest internalization levels in higher education, such as Poland, Finland, and

Italy. In those countries, the share of law teachers using foreign is over 60%.54

Almost 90% of Russian law teachers use Internet resources in their work, but mostly as passive consumers of information

(Table 6).

Table 6. The use of Internet resources by law teachers

The way of using Internet resources Type of law schools

Mainstream Elite Departmental Total

Do not use (n=31) 8 6,8 2 7,1

Have a website related to my teaching (n=29) 6,7 8,5 4,1 6,7

Place publications on legal issues on Internet resources 14,1 30,5 10,2 15,9

(including blogs and social networks) (n=69)***

Comment on other lawyers’ statements on the Internet 8,9 8,5 12,2 9,2

(n=40)

Read publications of other authors, but typically do 83,7 84,7 87,8 84,3

not comment on them (n=366)

Only one teacher in fifteen maintains its website and posts teaching materials. Moreover, very few teachers participate in

legal discussions. Again, we see striking differences between teachers of elite law schools and other types of law schools.

Almost a third of the teachers of elite law schools are involved in the production of up-to-date legal information online -

they publish their opinions on blogs and social networks. Teachers of mass law schools do this twice less frequently, and

teachers of departmental law schools are practically not present on the Internet.

54
Marek Kwiek. 2015. "The Internationalization of Research in Europe: A Quantitative Study of 11 National Systems from a Micro-Level Perspective."
Journal of Studies in International Education 19.4: 341-359.
Practice vs. Theory

The widely discussed issue in Russia is whether legal education should be focused on doctrine or students should be

armed with practical skills. A typical Russian employer would complain that graduates are not fully prepared to practice

law. In contrast, law schools, especially in classical universities, see their task in developing general professional and

cultural competencies. There is also a tension between the production of universal lawyers or specialists, i.e., lawyers for

the prosecution, lawyers for the judiciary, lawyers for business. This tension between the universalist and specialist

education and between the 'cultural man' and the 'practitioner' is not new. As Clark points out, this tension is detected by

Max Weber in his discussion of the role of bureaucracy, where he establishes it as one of the principal problems of

education.55 Moreover, the labor market places different demands on the competencies of a young professional. Shepeleva

and Novikova mention that employers do not contribute to universities' understanding of the balance between theoretical

and practical training. Employers, in most cases, are not able to articulate and translate their demands to universities

because they have different expectations towards what kind and to what extent practical training should be provided by

universities and what skills should be acquired directly at the workplace. 56 Besides, there are regional specifics. So, the

need for lawyers' competencies in the economically developed regions of Russia may differ from the need of employers

in depressive regions. The problem of uncertainty in the goals of legal education is not specific to Russia. Researchers

all over the world wonder what legal education should aim for: to teach students to 'think like a lawyer' (a cognitive

dimension) or 'act like a lawyer' (practical dimension) and to what extent should it promote professional responsibility

(an ethical dimension)? Critics argue that legal education is doing a good job on the former but is woefully inadequate on

the latter two57.

When asked what the main goals of higher legal education should be, the surveyed law teachers were practically

unanimous. From their point of view, higher education should be more focused on the transfer of theoretical knowledge

rather than preparation for practical work.

However, teachers of elite law schools deviate again from the general trend. They are less categorical on this issue than

departmental and mass law schools: instead of ‘completely agree’, they chose a slightly more neutral answer ‘agree’. A

greater consensus is found concerning the dichotomy between universal and specialized training. All respondents

propagate universal education. It is noteworthy that this position of law teacher does not agree with what we observe in

55
Burton Clark. 1973. ‘’Development of the Sociology of Higher Education.’’ Sociology of Education 46(1): 2–14.
56
Olga Shepeleva and Asmik Novikova. 2013. Juridicheskoe obrazovanie: poisk novyh standartov kachestva [Legal education: in search of new quality
standards]. Moscow: Institute ‘Public Interests Law’: 25.
57
Rebecca Sandefur and Jeffrey Selbin. 2009. "The Clinic Effect." Clinical Law Review 16: 57-107.
practice. On the contrary, we see that over the past two decades, the number of departmental law schools has grown - not

only those of the Ministry of Internal Affairs but also the law schools of the prosecutor's office and the Investigative

Committee. Graduates of these law schools should start working in the relevant government agencies immediately after

graduating. One would expect that teachers will appreciate the possibility of in-depth training in the framework of certain

specialties. But according to the answers of the teachers working in departmental law schools, we do not observe this

pattern. They still prefer the universalist approach. Finally, the surveyed educators would like to teach people who are

purposefully pursuing legal careers. They believe they should guide students to work in the legal profession. Again, the

lecturers of elite law schools depart from the general trend. They are slightly less inclined to consider a legal career as

their students' only desirable and acceptable aim.

The structure of the curriculum of the law schools contains many theoretical subjects - history of state and law, history of

political and legal doctrines, general theory of state and law, problems of the theory of state and law, philosophy and

philosophy of law, sociology of law, comparative jurisprudence. Recently, the course ‘History and methodology of legal

science’ was introduced into the curriculum for master students, causing a lot of discussions.58 Teachers expressed strong

doubts about the need for such a course since it duplicates an already large number of theoretical classes. They also

wondered whether a unified methodology is even possible for jurisprudence.

The rift in educational goals between the transfer of abstract theoretical knowledge and the formation of practical skills

runs along two axes. First, teachers of elite law schools feel much more tension regarding the opposition between theory

and practice. Second, the position in practice vs. theory debate largely depends on intergenerational differences. Russian

academic tradition prioritizes abstract knowledge produced at universities over practical skills, even though it is of little

use in the actual practice of a judge, lawyer, or investigator.59 Where the younger generation of teachers is not entirely

satisfied with this situation, the older generation holds precisely the opposite point of view.

You know, I am a conservative in this sense. I believe that the classical school of higher education did not

have anything wrong, i.e., there is some basic set of legal subjects that must be taught without a doubt. Do

you understand? Unfortunately, in our country, much of what was previously taught obligatory has now

become optionally (teacher of a classical university, interview No. 11).

58
Natalya Krotkova. 2016. ‘’Istorija i metodologija juridicheskoj nauki (" Kruglyj stol" kafedry teorii gosudarstva i prava i politologii juridicheskogo
fakul'teta MGU im. MV Lomonosova i zhurnala" Gosudarstvo i pravo")’’ [History and methodology of legal science (A round table of the department
of the theory of the state and law and political science of MSU law school and the journal ‘State and Law’)] State and Law 4: 5-31.
59
Kirill Titaev and Maria Shklyaruk. Rossijskie sledovateli: prizvanie, professija, povsednevnost'.
The demand for greater attention of universities to the development of students' practical skills is expressed, first of all,

by employers. Many students, plunging into the professional environment, admit that their ideas about how law functions

were quickly dispelled after facing practical realities. However, from the point of view of the first group of teachers, this

should not be the reason for adjusting teaching methods to this reality. They see their task as teaching students what law

should be rather than how it works in practice.

Many agree that the advantage of departmental training is the acquaintance with the practices and organizational context

of the future workplace from the student's bench. This ability is lacking, according to employers, in civilian law schools.

However, in the course of departmental training, a student (cadet) can get only a very rough idea of her future work, most

frequently in the form of a training simulation. At the same time, the game element has its drawbacks since it gives

students a flawed and sometimes distorted idea of practical activity. For example, one of the respondents cited a simulator

of an inspection of the crime scene, implemented in the preparation of future investigators. The cadet finds herself in a

virtual room or other area and must search, guessing where the hidden object may be. However, according to the

respondent, the computer simulation and the actual crime scene are entirely different. Therefore, a recent graduate starting

work as an investigator will inevitably make mistakes at the scene of a real crime incident.

Thus, the advantages of departmental law schools over civilian law schools in terms of practical preparation for future

work are exaggerated. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny that a student of a departmental law school has much more

certainty about the subsequent place of work. However, this does not necessarily result in acquiring common professional

values and the identity of a state lawyer. For the most part, the specialized departmental training boils down to physical

and fire training, a paramilitary regime and discipline, and a small share of genuine legal subjects in teaching. Therefore,

it is difficult to consider such training as an example of professional higher legal education.

Conclusion

The legal profession must recognize oneself as a community. This community is formed through joint socialization in

obtaining a legal education. This presupposes the acquisition at the university not so much of the knowledge and skills

that are in demand on the market but of professional identity through socialization. The unity of the legal profession is

created not only by professional associations and codes of ethics but also by how freely people with a legal education can

move from one position to another. American lawyers are a classic example. In the United States, there is a single legal
association with common standards of conduct. While working as a lawyer, an American lawyer can go to the prosecutor's

office or judge at any time. In most European countries, the legal profession is segmented, similarly to Russia. However,

transitioning from one position to another is usually not difficult for European lawyers. For example, in England, the

judiciary is replenished mainly from lawyers (barristers). In Germany, the educational system creates the unity of the

profession since all future lawyers undergo general practical training, mainly in the courts.

In the Russian case, we instead have many closed corporations of lawyers. It is almost impossible for a lawyer to become

a judge; there are informal barriers to becoming a judge. Replenishment of the legal profession from former law

enforcement officers is taking place, but the lawyers themselves are somewhat wary of colleagues with such a past. As

for unorganized legal groups - court representatives without a lawyer status, lawyers from the field of consulting, in-house

lawyers of companies, there is a process of building symbolic boundaries separating the lawyer community from these

groups, which has only aggravated recently in connection with plans to expand the lawyer's monopoly. Оur findings

suggest this is likely to be programmed by the type of law school.

This article focused on the commonalities and variations of teaching staff and teaching process in Russian law schools.

Consequently, we have identified substantial differences in the structure and background of teaching staff and the teaching

process across three types of institutions providing legal education – elite, mass, and departmental law schools. As our

findings demonstrate, Russian elite law schools are rather 'conservative' in their recruitment policy. Their faculty include

more male and senior teachers as well as more of their graduates. Simultaneously, teaching practices at elite law schools

demonstrate more flexibility and openness to innovations. This is especially true in comparison to rigid and outdated

approaches in departmental law schools. The teaching in the former is more focused on preparing top-class lawyers.

Teachers have more flexibility and can integrate new courses into the program.

In contrast, the extent and variety of legal subjects taught at departmental law schools are much lesser. In these law

schools, a significant part of the teaching is dedicated to physical and fire training. The training is focused on preparing

graduates to work as law enforcement officers in state agencies (procuracy, police, justice departments, penitentiary

system, etc.). Therefore, the students in elite and departmental law schools are taught by different teachers and in different

ways. It is not surprising that graduates of elite and departmental law schools do not share similar values in their further

work. As for mass law schools, the teachers and teaching methods do not demonstrate such extremes as the other two

types of law schools. This could form the basis for closer ties between Russian lawyers in the future.