Journal of the Charles University Law Faculty
Michal Urban, Petr Soukup
Author’s affiliation:
Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague; Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague
What do law students know and can do, and why do they study law? An empirical look at 3rd and 5th year students at three law schools in the Czech Republic.
Jurisprudence 6/2023 Section: Articles Page: 28-36
Keywords: legal education, legal knowledge, legal skills, motivation to study, legal education reform
Abstract: Legal education in the Czech Republic is insufficiently based on empirical data. The first step towards changing this is to find out more about the students who enter law schools: why do they want to study law and what knowledge and skills do they have? To this end, the authors have constructed a comprehensive questionnaire that measures the knowledge, skills, learning motivations, and values of first, third and fifth year law students. In this text, they analyse the study motivations, knowledge, and skills of students who studied at Prague, Brno or Olomouc law faculties in the 2018/2019 academic year in the 3rd and 5th year. Using exploratory factor analysis to look for related variables and structural models to look for relationships between variables, it is concluded that, in particular, knowledge of civil and commercial law showed an impact on the level of legal skills, the motivation of students in Year 3 and Year 5 differed only minimally, and Year 5 students achieved a higher level of knowledge in areas of applicable law and a higher level of legal skills.
