The Crisis of Russian Legal Education in Comparative Perspective
Introduction In Russia, legal education has a great influence on the public sphere. Many political and public leaders are law schools graduates. As beneficiaries of a legal education, they should promote values of justice and social rights, and the rule of law. The irony is that despite being governed by lawyers for many years (for example, Alexander Kerensky in 1917, a graduate of St. Petersburg University; Vladimir Lenin from 1917 to 1924, expelled from Kazan University; Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985 to 1991, graduated from Moscow State University; Vladimir Putin from 2000 to 2008 and 2012 to present, graduated from St. Petersburg University; Dmitry Medvedev from 2008 to 2012, graduated from St. Petersburg University) Russia is still trying to ignore the rule of law. The crisis in legal education has been a subject of discussion over the past few decades in different countries and jurisdictions. In Russia, many have also begun to speak about this crisis and since the late 1990s, this dialogue still continues. It affects both the education of and the practice of law. But one must consider the situation alongside universal tendencies: Are these problems really only Russian, or are there similar difficulties elsewhere? Legal education in the United States also seems to undergo reform every ten to fifteen years.1 Recently, and even earlier, the American media dazzled with headlines about problems in the lawyer training system. A typical article on this subject in The New York Times begins with the words "American legal education is in crisis."2 President Barack Obama, who taught for more than ten years at the University of Chicago Law School, and who understands the