Legal education in Germany and the US: a comparative perspective

INTRODUCTION
Becoming a legal professional in the most of countries requires a structured
curriculum that is made up of high standards and academically rigorous classes.
People can start their path to a career in law as soon as they complete their legal
training course. This assigment is to analyze two of the most sophisticated legal
education system in the world under a comparative perspective, which are legal
education in Germany and legal education in the US. To serve the
aforementioned purpose I would choose topic 19: “Legal education in Germany
and the US: A comparative perspective”.
MAIN CONTENT
1. Similarities between legal education in Germany and legal education in
the US
First of all, there is no specialised legal training system for separated legal
career but general training program for all type of professionals
Secondly, all individuals who want to pursue path to career in law shall have
decent qualification to meet rigorous requirements of law schools before
entering as well as graduating from it.
Thirdly, training programs in two countries have specific training methods that
combine theory and practice however with different extent.
Lastly, the law subjects included in the curriculum are similar to those found in
many other countries’ curriculum such as a number of compulsory subjects
which are constitutional law, civil law, administrative law, criminal law, …
2. Differences between legal education in Germany and legal education in
the US
2.1. Student standard
In the U.S., law training is the training of students who have graduated from
university. Also, having a university degree in another major is a must for a
person who wants to study law. this requirement makes the law school
admission quite challenging. In addition to the condition that they have a
bachelor's degree from other majors, they must take The Law School Admission
Test (LSAT). Successful applicants for this national judicial exam will be be
able to attend law school.
Unlike in the US, in Germany, in order to pursue law education, students
basically need to take the entrance exam or admission to law universities or to
law faculty at general universities.
This fact shows that entry requirements for legal training in the US are stringent
than those in Germany
2.2. Training course period
In Germany, the university studies take about five years on average, the
practical training two more years. The objective of legal education is to produce
well-educated, uniform jurists (“Einheitsjuristen”). That means that all who pass
the First and the Second State Exam are qualified for all legal professions, e.g.,
lawyer, judge, and prosecutor . Meanwhile, in America, the training process
takes relatively 3 consecutive years in the Falculty of law of any university.
2.3. Training curriculum
In Germany, the total period of training course is divided into two stages: First,
a future legal profession must study at a university in order to obtain the first
degree in law (Erste Juristische Prüfung). Second, the candidate must go
through a mandatory clerkship with several stages in order to obtain the
necessary practical skills, at the end of which the candidate must pass a set of
written and oral examinations (Zweites Staatsexamen).
During the four or five years at university, all law students have to cover a wide
range of compulsory subjects (Pflichtf¨acher) such as the main elements of civil
law, criminal law, public law, procedural law, and the law of the European
Union; legal methodology; and the philosophical, historical, and social
foundations of the law, and an elective subject (called Wahlfach until 2002 and
now called Schwerpunktbereich. Students have to pass three written
examinations in civil, criminal, and public law, and one written examination in
the so-called Grundlagenfach, an optional subject that is related to the historical,
social, and philosophical foundations of the law (for example, Roman law,
history of German law, philosophy of law, or ecclesiastical law). This first stage
ends with a comprehensive final examination which covers all the knowledge
acquired during all semesters at the university.
All student successfully complete the first examination now shall move on to
the practical stage of legal education at which they could obtain a practical
training. After graduation, they could exercise as all kind of legal professions.
However, prior to that, the graduates must undertake a mandatory clerkship that
takes two years and consists of several stages following 1. At a civil court; 2. At
a criminal court or with a prosecutor; 3. At an administrative authority or
(partially) at an administrative court; 4. With a counsel (often at a law firm). In
the fifth stage, the candidate can chose where to go: court, parliaments,
ministries, companies, international organizations, churches, or elsewhere. Each
stage lasts at least for three months, meanwhile the stage with a counsel
normally takes nine months and three months of almost free choice among the
existing legal professions. Finally, the Second, or Great State Examination
which aims at testing practical skills marks the end of legal education.
In America, most law schools have their own mandatory curriculum for first
year student, which typically includes: Civil procedure, Constitutional law,
Contracts, Criminal law, Property, Torts, Legal research, Legal writing
(including objective analysis, persuasive analysis, and legal citation). These
basic courses are intended to provide an overview of the broad study of law.
After the first year, law students are generally free to pursue different fields of
legal study. All law schools offer (or try to offer) a broad array of upper-
division courses in substantive areas of law like administrative law, corporate
law, international law, admiralty law, intellectual property law, and tax law, and
in procedural areas of law not normally covered in the first year, like criminal
procedure and remedies. Many law schools also offer upper-division practical
training courses in client counseling, trial advocacy, appellate advocacy, and
alternative dispute resolution. Depending upon the law school, practical training
courses may involve fictional exercises in which students interact with each
other or with volunteer actors playing clients, witnesses, and judges, or real-
world cases at legal clinics.
Most law courses are less about doctrine and more about learning how to
analyze legal problems, read cases, distill facts and apply law to facts. Finally,
the emphasis in law schools is rarely on the law of the particular state in which
the law school locates, but on the law generally throughout the country.
2.4. Training method
Training method of the American significantly differs from that of other
countries worldwide which particularly consists of two methods namely
Socratic method and Case study method.
Case Study method is used to deliver lessons through analyzing selected
caselaws. It requires the students to prepare the cases in depth for classes and to
discuss those cases using case method techniques
The Socratic method forces students to teach each other based on their
individual understanding of legal theory and the facts of the case at hand. It
consists of calling on a student at random, asks him or her about an argument
made in an assigned case, asks the student whether he or she agrees with the
argument, and then uses a series of questions designed to expose logical flaws
in the student's argument. This method benefits student to reinforce their legal
knowledges, team-working skills, analyzing skills,...
For third year students, clinical teaching method shall be implemented as
students took part in role playing exercises designed to familiarize them with
various aspects of legal practice; their performance in these role-playing
exercises would then be critically evaluated by the legal instructor.
About the method of law training in Germany, there are currently two different
perspectives: the reform perspective and the conservative perspective. The
group of reform views said that Germany as well as many countries belonging
to Civil Law Family need to adopt a practical method in legal training like that
of the UK-US countries, which means they had better reduce doctrine and
incorporate practical cases into the teaching of law subjects. In contrast, the
conservative point of view group said that the traditional German legal training
system is still sufficiently effectiv. This is because the law training in the first
stage is associated with basic legal knowledge training, with the aim of
providing comprehensive knowledge to students. More profound knowledge
and practical skills of legal profession are the pivotal task of the second stage.
Nonetheless, recent survey results have shown that many law faculties in the
territory of Germany have focused on the balance between the theoretical and
practical content in the structure of curricula.
We can conclude that both Germany and the US pay serious attention to solving
the real-life, but the US focus on cases while German concentrates more on
theory. The training methods are different due to the different training
requirements, while German legal education requires a profound understanding
of law at the university level, the US requires excellent skills in solving
practical cases.
2.5. Training material
The major material for American legal trainees is caselaw while in the
Germany, written legal document system is used during law training course.
These differences are mainly due to the fact that the two aforementioned
countries represent two fundamental legal families in the world which are
Common Law Family and Civil Law Family.
3. Lessons for Vietnam
The lgeal education concept in US and Germany demonstrates that: it is of
fundamental importance to focus on training future legal professionals
thoroughly right at the university, especially on the training method so that right
at school students are able to form legal reasoning as soon as possible. This is
one of the arguments for proposing the training of a bachelor of law as an
antecedent to train lawyers at the Judicial Academy, Ministry of Justice. The
Judicial Academy - "Major Center for Judicial Officer Training will build its
own principles and technology for bachelor's training as a antecedent to train
lawyers in the next step, meeting the needs of judicial reform and international
integration in Vietnam.
Moreover, the legal education concept in Germany as well shows that: It is
especially important to evaluate academic performance through exams with the
responsibility of supervising, managing, evaluating exams, even giving exam
questions by the Ministry of Justice. In Vietam, trainees who take the lawyer
training course are trained with law bachelor's programs at different training
institutions and following a number of different training systems such as
specialized training system, second degree training system, in-office training
system ... etc resulting in uneven quality of students. The organization of
entrance exams under the supervision of the Ministry of Justice which aims to
select trainees with certain qualifications to continue training leagal professional
is rational and significant, as well as reinforcing the spirit of method not only
focusing on the number of trained students but also on the quality of them.
CONCLUSION
Both legal education programs in the US and Germany have its own merits.
This assignment shall provide me myself with more general and comprehensive
knowledge of two different legal training systems by analyzing similarities and
differences between them.