Abstract
In Ireland, legal education is delivered via a mix of university law schools, institutes of technology, and professional providers. Until recently, legal education was largely inward-looking and geared at producing practitioners for domestic legal work. This was facilitated by low levels of external competition and structural attributes of the profession enabling protection from market forces. Today, Irish legal education and legal practice are undergoing a slow change with an increasing ‘internationalised’ outlook. The context of a small market and jurisdiction with limited reach has not prevented Irish law schools and the legal profession from ‘going global’ – in actual fact, they have clearly been committed to embrace the possibilities arising from a greater internationalisation of legal education (IOLE).
The aim of this chapter is to provide clear indications of this phenomenon under three sections. The first section will present the existing legal education and legal training model, as well as identify indicators of their internationalisation. The second section will deal with the debate about IOLE in Ireland. In the third section, the practicalities of IOLE will be examined mainly through a survey of the educational offering provided by law schools across the country with regard to internationalisation. Finally, we will address, in concluding remarks, the issue of the necessity of IOLE in order to promote the so-called ‘global lawyer’.
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Notes
- 1.
Ireland counts 4.61 millions of inhabitants (CSO Population and Migration Estimates in April 2014) and has a 11.3 % unemployment rate (CSO Standardised Unemployment Rate Annual Average 2014). After its banking and property crisis, Ireland was bailed out with 85bn euros of emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. After drastic budgetary cuts and tax rises, the economy grew by 0.4 % in the second quarter of 2013, hereby putting Ireland out of the recession. For data and statistics on Ireland, see the Central Statistics Office (CSO) at <http://www.cso.ie/en/index.html>. All websites were last accessed on 16 January 2016.
- 2.
No quota system exists for admission to the legal profession. There is a principle of freedom of access, subject to proper standards of education, with the market for professional legal services determining the number of practitioners (see below). The recession has had a sharp impact on the profession.
- 3.
To our knowledge, no studies have been specifically conducted on globalisation or internationalisation in Irish legal education. A bibliography on legal education in Ireland is provided at the end of the chapter.
- 4.
Interviewees are, at the time of writing and in alphabetical order, Professor Hilary Biehler (Head of the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin), Ms Sinéad Eaton (Head of the School of Law, University of Limerick), Ms Mary Faulkner (Dean of the School of Law, The Honorable Society of King’s Inns), Professor Steve Hedley (former Dean of Law, University College Cork), Mr TP Kennedy (Director of Education, Law Society of Ireland), Professor Ursula Kilkelly (Head of the Faculty of Law, University College Cork), Mr James McDermott (Lecturer, UCD, Barrister), Ms Bo Kim McDowell (Barrister-at-Law, Dublin, Attorney-at Law, New York), Professor Colin Scott (Dean of Law, UCD Sutherland School of Law). Interviewees are warmly thanked for their invaluable contribution to the research. The research also benefits from the feedback of other non-academic staff in UCD regarding data about admissions and careers destinations of law graduates. The template questionnaire for the interviews included a selected number of relevant questions drawned from the general questionnaire provided by the IACL Congress General Rapporteurs.
- 5.
The study deals with the Republic of Ireland and does not include legal education and legal practice of Northern Ireland. These form part of the United Kingdom chapter. The university law schools are: the Faculty of Law of University College Cork (UCC); the School of Law and Government of Dublin City University (DCU); the Sutherland School of Law of University College Dublin (UCD); the School of Law of Trinity College Dublin (TCD); the School of Law of the National University of Ireland Galway (NUI Galway); the School of Law of the University of Limerick (UL); and the Department of Law of the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUI Maynooth). Other institutions offer legal education. These are the Institutes of Technology in Athlone, Carlow, Dublin (i.e. DIT School of Social Sciences and Law), Letterkenny and Waterford, as well as a few mostly Dublin-based private colleges, namely Dublin Business School (which incorporates Portobello College), Dorset College, Griffith College and Open University of Ireland. Although their students numbers and course offerings are growing, they provide legal education on a lesser scale. They are not included for the purpose of this research which puts emphasis on university and professional law schools.
- 6.
For further details, see Byrne and McCutcheon (2009, pp. 61–90).
- 7.
Both professional law schools are open to applicants with non-law degrees provided they pass a preliminary examination offered every year by the professional bodies. Holders of an approved degree (other than an approved degree in law) and mature applicants (defined as students who do not hold an approved degree and are over 25 years of age) will need to study for a 2-year Diploma in Legal Studies at the King’s Inns and pass the relevant annual examination before proceeding to take the entrance examination to the Bar. This is the first stage of training; it is an academic course and the standard of the examinations is the same as that obtaining in the universities. The very first step for non-graduates wishing to enter the solicitors’ profession is a preliminary examination in English, Irish Politics and Government, and General Knowledge. University graduates from Ireland and the UK or holders of degrees (regardless of the discipline) awarded by the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC) are exempt from this examination.
- 8.
The different training tracks for other parts of the profession (e.g. corporate lawyers, judges or judicial officers) is not specifically examined here. For further details about judges, the State’s two Law Officers (i.e. the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions) and law clerks, see Byrne and McCutcheon (2009, pp. 89–90).
- 9.
The Legal Services Regulation Bill 2011 (2011, No. 58) is part of the key structural reforms included in the Government Programme for National Recovery 2011–2016. It also meets a number of the State’s key commitments in the EU/IMF Programme of Financial Support for Ireland aimed at structural reform building on the recommendations of the Legal Costs Working Group and the Competition Authority. Its main object is to establish independent regulation of the legal profession, to improve access and competition, make legal costs more transparent and ensure adequate procedures for addressing consumer complaints.
- 10.
Most solicitors work in private practice, but commercial and industrial organisations also employ solicitors, as do the Civil Service and the public sector generally.
- 11.
The professional course is called the Final Examination and comprises of three sequences of courses and examinations: FE-1 requires aspiring solicitors to pass eight papers (Company Law, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Equity and Trusts, European Union Law, Law of Contract, Law of Tort and Real Property); FE-2 is the Professional Course per se and involves 14 weeks of intensive full-time instruction followed by examination; FE-3 is the Advanced Course which requires to follow a further 7 weeks of instruction followed by examination.
- 12.
The entrance examination requires to sit five papers in Contract Law, Criminal Law, Irish Constitutional Law, Law of Evidence and Law of Torts.
- 13.
For further details, see Paris and Donnelly (2010, pp. 1075–1078).
- 14.
Chesterman (2009). Internationalisation took place when private international law and public international law developed in practice, and research aimed at training and educating on legal disputes between jurisdictions. Transnationalisation targets a more encompassing phenomenon which embraces all transfrontier laws and has given rise, in legal education, to a need for more mobility (exchange programmes, summer schools, etc.).
- 15.
Writing in the context of US legal education, Hall concludes: ‘Educating students for their possible future role as global lawyers is a significant and growing challenge for law schools’ (Hall 2013, p. 405).
- 16.
High-Level Group on International Education to the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills (2010). Also indicative of Ireland’s priorities, the country hosted the European Association for International Education Annual Conference in September 2012 (‘Rethinking Education, Reshaping Economies’, EAIE, 11–14 September 2012, Dublin).
- 17.
Of the 29,376 full-time international students in Higher Education in Ireland in 2010–2011, 459 only chose law as their major, which is the lowest number of students per subject choice (cf. Business and Administration has the highest number with 9,829 students). See the update report of the Higher Education Authority (2012).
- 18.
No exact figures are available for this claim. Generally speaking, official migration figures show that nearly 82,000 people left the country between April 2013 and April 2014. Almost half of these emigrants were Irish nationals accounting for 49.7 % (CSO Population and Migration Estimates in April 2014).
- 19.
Both authors of this report are in this category.
- 20.
Law schools tend to be timid in recruiting foreign staff. The last recruitment rounds in UCD, for example, did not include any international non English-speaking staff despite a solid strategy of internationalisation, especially towards Europe and Asia.
- 21.
A proportion of law students in the Republic come from Northern Ireland although in small numbers. In 2013, only 8 out of 274 new entrants were from Northern Ireland in UCD, for example (2 are non-EU students and 13 EU students but this includes French students in the dual degree). Figures were obtained from UCD Registry – Admissions. Students from Northern Ireland choose to study law in the south for reasons of choice of courses; a recent increase in numbers has been partly due to the reintroduction of fees in British universities.
- 22.
For example, forty-two percent of respondents were employed in Ireland (including Northern Ireland) according to the 2013 UCD First Destinations Survey aimed at law graduates.
- 23.
The Programme further encourages European mobility by offering to Irish law firms the possibility, in return, to host a visiting lawyer. Emphasis is put on the advantages of such mobility since the domestic lawyers will benefit from the participant’s background and knowledge of a different jurisdiction, his/her language skills, and of the opportunity to establish links with the participant and his/her home Bar for future transactions.
- 24.
See the relevant transposing legislation in Section 20 of The Solicitors (Amendment) Act, 2002 (No. 19 of 2002), European Community (Lawyers Establishment) Regulations, 2003 (S.I. No. 732 of 2003), Regulation 12 of The Solicitors Acts 1954–2002 (Professional Indemnity Insurance) (Amendment) Regulations, 2004 (S.I. No. 115 of 2004).
- 25.
See, for example, the Who’s Who Legal 100 (2013) which provides ‘an independent assessment of the world’s top law firms’: two Irish law firms are in the first 50 in 2013. See also The Legal 500 Series which is another coverage (‘the most comprehensive worldwide coverage currently available on legal services providers, in over 100 countries’). See also The Lawyer which indicates that two national law firms are in the top 20 of European law firms in 2011 (The Lawyer 2011). These two Irish law firms (the same in the above mentioned three rankings) have offices in the UK (Belfast and London) and in the US.
- 26.
- 27.
The IALT, established in 1979, is an all-island organisation bringing together legal academics and teachers of law from both sides of the border. Its aim is to further excellence in legal education and research through conferences, research projects and acting as a collective voice for law teachers. There is also the regular gathering of the Legal Education Symposium of Ireland which started in 2007.
- 28.
The ELFA was founded in 1995 in Leuven by more than 80 Faculties of Law located in different universities across Europe. Its aim is to act as an international forum for the discussion of legal topics related to legal education.
- 29.
The IALS was founded in 2005 by legal educators from a number of countries representing the various legal systems of the world. Its mission is to foster a mutual understanding of and respect for the world’s varied and changing legal systems and cultures as a contribution to justice and a peaceful world. It further indicates several actions in the area of legal education such as to enhance and strengthen the role of law in the development of societies through legal education, to serve as an open and independent forum for discussion of diverse ideas about legal education, to contribute to the better preparation of lawyers as they increasingly engage in transnational or global legal practice, and when they pursue careers other than private practice, including governmental, non-governmental, academic, and corporate careers.
- 30.
For example, some issues around internationalisation were discussed at the 2013 IALS Global Law Deans Forum attended by two Deans of Irish law schools (Law School Leadership in the Twenty-First Century: Meeting the Global Challenge, IALS & National University of Singapore Faculty of Law, 25–27 September 2013).
- 31.
See a different point of view from another respondent who put forward a critique at the trend of globalisation in that it arguably encourages an influx of EU students who enter international law programmes in Ireland because of free fees in undergraduate legal education and relatively less expensive programmes at graduate level, hereby offering competitive alternatives to the US and the UK.
- 32.
Criminal law can be international but probation precisely would be the one aspect which is purely local.
- 33.
Financial constraints have clearly put a strain in recent years on the number of students who apply to study abroad.
- 34.
Established in 2005 by one of the authors.
- 35.
Summer schools between several partners, although not degree-awarding, would be another indicator of international mobility as a form of integrated collaboration between Irish law schools and foreign faculties.
- 36.
Irish is the first official language. Under Article 8 of the 1937 Constitution, Irish is ‘the national language’ and English the ‘second official language’ (Irish is then also an official language of the EU). A number of law schools offer Irish as a language elective. The BCL Law and Irish degree in UCC would be the most integrated (between law and Irish) in this regard as it aims at equipping graduates with a fluency in written and oral Irish, including legal terminology, as well as an ability to translate texts, including legal texts, from English to Irish and vice versa.
- 37.
The internationalisation dimension might be found to the extent of the proposed new Alternative Business Structures forms of which already exist in England, Wales, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada that enable greater business and employment opportunities and flexibility within the professions, and greater choice and competition for their clients.
- 38.
Frydman (2013, p. 8). The concept was primarily developed as regards microeconomics which refers to the perspective of an actor in his/her environment.
- 39.
This is not by any means a first in history (see ius commune and pre-state law). The McGill Transystemic programme has demonstrated it for the teaching of law.
- 40.
For example, NUI Maynooth has two compulsory courses on moot court with the expectation that students are to participate in external competitions geared at this outcome.
- 41.
This is not different from what Hall says about global lawyers working in global law firms: ‘The challenge is to encourage lawyers to accept that globalization is not just about allowing multinationals to profit globally, but that it has political and social dimensions as well’ (Hall 2013, p. 405).
- 42.
Some 60–70 according to the Law Society.
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Acknowledgements
This research was completed as the national report on Legal Education for the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL) Congress, Vienna, July 2014. This chapter is a revised version. Marie-Luce Paris wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the UCD Sutherland School of Law Research Fund which allowed her to complete the work. She wishes to thank her colleagues at UCD Sutherland School of Law for their comments on an earlier draft presented at a research seminar. Sincere thanks are also expressed to the interviewees and other colleagues in UCD, in the Law Programme Office, UCD Admissions Office and UCD Career Development Centre in particular, who replied to numerous queries.
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Gopalan, S., Paris, ML. (2016). Small Goes Global: The Internationalisation of Legal Education in Ireland. In: Jamin, C., van Caenegem, W. (eds) The Internationalisation of Legal Education. Ius Comparatum - Global Studies in Comparative Law, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29125-3_9
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