Professional orientation opens wide opportunities for students to determine their future life path. Sooner or later each person has to decide what do they want to be.
The "Legal Clinic - Your Consultant in Professional Choice" project is the result of a generalization of the experience of a career guidance work of the "Legal Clinic" training laboratory in the Brest State University (BrSU). The project is designed to increase the effectiveness of the career guidance in the context of interaction between institutions of secondary and higher education, as well as commercial organizations which are interested in young specialists.
The "Legal Clinic" training laboratory of the BrSU is a kind of platform for effective interactive interaction of the project participants: schoolchildren, students and specialists.
Individual forms of career guidance work are identified depending on the number of participants in the project - an assistant specialist; group - trainings, interactive classes, the school of a young lawyer and others. As a mass form of career guidance work Open Days are being held.
Various forms of career guidance work are used to improve efficiency: passive (lectures, presentations and videos), active (open days, conversations), interactive (trainings). The complex combination of these forms gives students the most complete idea of the future profession and helps in self-determination.
The practice of the professional development of the personality of future lawyers during the education process convincingly shows that the results of it are unsatisfying and are now lagging behind the requirements of the time, while the social role of education in society requires that they should be ahead of it. The level of knowledge of graduates of the Faculty of Law does not cause special critical assessments usually. Most of them have basic professional skills, but in general their practical background, professional upbringing, and development need to be improved. Often, the students deal with the facts of unfavorable personal changes (frustration with professional choice, the emergence of professional deformation, a decrease in motivation to achieve professional excellence, professional instability, etc.).
Therefore, the issues of ensuring the proper professional development of law students have become a priority. This fact corresponds to the requirements of the current curricula and modern legislation on the radical improvement of the system of legal education.
The primary tasks of vocational guidance in the field of jurisprudence are:
To guarantee deep and sustainable professional self-determination of students, their psychological entry into the profession;
To get students familiar with modern realities of legal activity;
To form belief in the correctness of the choice of profession and the possibility of self-realization and self-affirmation in it;
To train a serious attitude towards studies and development work as their professional qualities;
To develop the professional student’s awareness and professional settings of modern civilized lawyer focused on attention to the individual, to protect his rights, as well as to prevent the emergence and dominance of accusatory and penal settings, which are often consciously or unconsciously formed at trained young lawyers.
The work on the project is focused mainly on professional informing. Three types of information are critically important in the professional informing process:
1) informationabout the profession (specialty) - its content, its conditions, work organization, ways of learning a specific profession, payments, requirements for the personality, qualified opportunities and career growth;
2) information about a person - his abilities and inabilities, interests and inclinations;
3) information about the current and prospective staffing demand - the demand and the development possibilitieson the labor market.
The choice of profession, university or job is based on the comparison of these three elements. The correctness of the choice of profession, the success of professional training and activities depends on how reliable and detailed is the obtained information.
The result of professional informing is the acquisition of information of such scope and content that are necessary for conscious professional self-determination, as well as mastering the ways of independent searching for information and getting acquainted with the necessary tools (directories, bulletins, etc.).
The aim of the project is to provide support for the students of the Brest region of Belarus in the professional orientation in the field of jurisprudence.
Objectives of the project are:
1. To form a stable image about the role of a lawyer in society.
2. To teach to understand the content of the professional activities of a lawyer.
3. To develop the ability to relate the requirements of the profession of a lawyer with individual qualities.
4. To organize the interaction of the training laboratory "Legal Clinic" with the customers of personnel.
5. To create conditions for the deliberate choice of the profession in the field of jurisprudence.
The directions of work on the project are divided by the target audience: schoolchildren and students.
There are many contradictions between the requirements of important qualities of the professionand the availability of these qualities in schoolchildren who have chosen the appropriate training profile for admission to law faculties. Usually students' views on the activities of lawyers are very different from the real essence of legal professions. To overcome these contradictions, Legal clinic students are leading interactive classes for schoolchildren in secondary schools in Brest.The lessons are dedicated to the conditions for admission to the Faculty of Law. Legal education of schoolchildren is one of the first areas of work of the Legal Clinic. Participation in interactive classes develops such individual qualities as: understanding of the norms of behavior regulating the lawyers’ appearances; high level of intellectual development; communicative activity.
Vocational guidance work should begin with children 11-12 years old, when it’s easy to involve children in a new form of activity through playing to form an interest in the profession. To solve thatproblem, we use Open Doors Day method. Children 10-16 years old can get acquainted with the future profession in the Legal Clinic. They have possibilities to study the basics of criminalistics techniques, to draw up a plan for investigating a criminal case, to take part in a simplified trial, to present the plaintiff's and defendant's positions in the Court).
Mastery of senior pupils with ideas about the profession of the legal sphere and the image of the "I" is ensured by the practice-oriented means of the
Also mastering the profession is realized due to “School of the Young Lawyer”, where specialists of the law faculty lecture on various branches of law and students have meetings with law enforcement officers, the Brest Regional Bar Association lawyers, judges, prosecutor's office workers, Local executive and administrative institutions officials and businessmen.
Thus, the student goes through three stages of forming readiness for choosing the professions in the training laboratory "Legal Clinic": abstract choice, information and stabilization. These stages are ensured by the following conditions:
creation of a broad information background to getfamiliarized with the professions and their requirements to the individual qualities of the person;
development of the ability to analyze legal professional activity and to self-analysis;
acquisition of practical experience through participation in the Days of Open Doors and the “School of the Young Lawyer” to form ideas about oneself as a subject of legal professional activity.
The results of the project are divided into qualitative and quantitative.
The program "specialist assistant" is being tested at the Brest State University. Students of 2, 3 and 4 courses can take part in the program. Work in this direction is aimed at the formation and development of professional, practical competence, which allows to combine academic, social, professional competencies for solving problems in the sphere of professional activities of a lawyer.
Studying the discipline "specialist assistant", involves the acquisition of knowledge in the field of competence, the powers of the investigator, lawyer, judge, notary, realtor. The problems of the development of law enforcement institutions are considered.
The "specialist assistant" course is designed to instill practical skills of students in their work and to form a system of views, beliefs and principles underlying their future specialty and to provide a conscious, creative and proactive approach to solve professional problems.
The main tasks of studying the "specialist assistant" course are:
To study the legal basis for the activities of the investigator, lawyer, judge, notary, realtor;
To study tactical techniques and methodological recommendations of an investigator, a lawyer, a judge, a notary, a realtor;
To increase general and professional culture level;
To develop and to improve business and intellectual qualities, legal and civic maturity, awareness of the social importance of their profession.
The program is focused on the acquisition and improvement of specific legal skills. The techniques of preparing, drafting and processing of procedural document, for example.
According to the program the student by the end of the course should be able to:
Judicial Activity
To protect personal rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus;
To carry out the trial;
To resolve issues related to the appointment and preparation of the trial;
To make judgments, sentences and decisions.
To provide organizational support for the activities of the Court.
Prosecutorial activity
To supervise the implementation of legislation;
To maintain a state prosecution in the Court;
To coordinate the law enforcement activities of the government agencies that confront crime and corruption;
Investigation activities
To protect the rights and freedoms of the individual and interests of the society through a rapid and complete investigation of crimes;
To collect, verify and evaluate evidence;
To initiate criminal cases;
To take measures to ensure the safety of witnesses and other participants in criminal proceedings;
To apply measures of coercion for the criminals;
To organize the necessary measures to detect crimes and to identify the perpetrators;
Advocacy activities
To provide advice and clarification on legal issues;
To draw up applications, complaints and other documents of a legal nature;
To represent the interests of clients in courts;
To participate in pre-trial proceedings and in trial;
To implement legal assessmentsof documents and activities;
To implement legal work in the field of the business;
To take part in proceedings in arbitration;
Legal Counseling Activities
To organize legal support for the work of the state institutions and business organizations;
To use legal toolsto observe the contractual and labor discipline;
To protect property rights and to legitimate interests of the state institutions and business organizations;
To ensure compliance of local legal acts with the current legislation;
Notary activity
To verify transactions;
To take measures to protect the estate and to manage it;
To issue certificates of the inheritance right;
To certify the fidelity of copies of documents and extracts from them;
To certify the correctness of the translation of documents from one language to another and the authenticity of the signature on the documents;
To verify the facts of legal significance;
To pass applications of citizens and legal entities to other citizens and legal entities;
Realtor activity
To carry out consulting services for transactions with real estate;
To organize agreements on the terms of the forthcoming transaction.
Thus, the student is attached to the specialist of law enforcement agencies, the Brest Regional Bar Association, courts, prosecutors, customs authorities, local executive and administrative institutions, business entities and performs the tasks assigned to him. It helps to overcome the gap between theoretical training and practice, which helps to identify the individual personal qualities of the student and their relationship to the requirements for professional activity in the field of jurisprudence (as an investigator, an advocate, a notary, a prosecutor, a legal adviser).
This kind of work helps to create required conditions for the student's deliberate choice of his specialization in the field of jurisprudence.
Because of that additional special tasks are set:
• formation of students' steadfast interest in the specialty;
• accumulation of positive stereotypes of performing typical professional actions;
• accumulation of professional experience, i.e. the sums of typical professional models of legal activity;
• adaptation of students' internal capabilities to the requirements of legal practice.
The results of the project are divided into qualitative and quantitative.
Qualitative
The sense of responsibility of the project participants for their studies increased.
The participants have realisticconcepts about their profession, they have increased respect for it and pride in their involvement in solving legal problems.
The useful skills never getin the classrooms were formed.
Responsibility and interest in studying the academic disciplines with the installation for better preparation for professional work were increased.
Quantitative
Annually, the open days are held in the training laboratory "Legal Clinic" and interactive classes for schoolchildren (school № 7, 8, 9, 20, 35, Lyceum No. 1).
Annually, students who study at the Legal Clinic training laboratory enter the service of law enforcement agencies, customs authorities, legal consultations in Brest, where they have advantages over other candidates. By this day more than 50 students have got that practice.
Thus, professional orientation is a promising direction of the development of legal education in Belarus.
Qualitative
The sense of responsibility of the project participants for their studies increased.
The participants have realisticconcepts about their profession, they have increased respect for it and pride in their involvement in solving legal problems.
The useful skills never getin the classrooms were formed.
Responsibility and interest in studying the academic disciplines with the installation for better preparation for professional work were increased.
Quantitative
1 participant of the “School of Young Lawyer” was awarded a diploma of the third degree in the Republican Olympiad in Social Studies;
2 participants of the “School of Young Lawyer” became prizewinners of the Regional Olympiad on the Basics of Law;
2 members of the “School of Young Lawyer” study at the Faculty of Law of the BrSU;
5 participants of the “School of Young Lawyer” have chosen law faculties of other educational institutions.
Thus, the project is a promising direction for the development of legal education.