Developing Holistic Legal Education at Moldovan Universities

One of the key barriers to creating an independent and effective legal profession in Moldova is the poor standard of legal education at universities. As in much of the post-Soviet space, legal higher education has maintained the Soviet tradition of legal positivism and an emphasis on purist legal scholarship. This has serious consequences for the legal profession, as judges and lawyers possess an overly formalistic understanding of laws and procedures that leads to poor legal reasoning. Moreover, this legal purism insufficiently prepares students for the realities of the legal profession and the challenges they are likely to face in the course of their work, including practices of selective justice, corruption, and political pressure. This brief offers recommendations to various stakeholders to improve legal education by strengthening both the legal framework and teaching standards and objectives at the university level.