“Ireland trains too many lawyers” – DCU President Ferdinand von Prondzynski
Monday 25 September 2006

DCU President Ferdinand von Prondzynski

In a hard hitting address on our legal system and the legal profession, DCU President Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski told a legal symposium at TCD that Ireland is almost certainly training too many lawyers – and this could be a cause of our litigious society.

In his keynote address on “The Mission of a Law School in Today’s Ireland”, he argued that Ireland needs “fewer law graduates and less litigation, and moreover aspiring lawyers should do their studies at postgraduate level only.”

His controversial talk was made to a symposium organised by The School of Law, Trinity College, Dublin, in association with Dillon Eustace Solicitors, on “Education, Teaching, Learning and Research in the Irish Legal Academy” which took place on Friday, September 29th.

Other key points in his address were:

• Law schools may need to look again at the 'values' they teach, including the desirability of legal intervention;
• We may over time need to move away from undergraduate legal education entirely.

Professor von Prondzynski said: “We need to look again at what we are intending to achieve in legal education. Most law students go on to practise law, and achieve their qualification through additional courses in the professional bodies, i.e. the Law Society and the King's Inns. This means that they spend several years studying law, and in doing so have very little understanding of the circumstances of the clients they represent, whether these are disadvantaged people trying to assert their rights, or corporate entities doing business, or any other clients or users of the legal system.

”It would make more sense to follow the US model of encouraging would-be lawyers to study something else first, and then have a postgraduate degree programme which qualifies them for practice in either profession. That would also take the role of educator away from the professional bodies, who it could be argued in carrying out this role actually apply restrictive practices to entry into the profession.

Shifting the focus to postgraduate education will also give Law Schools a better opportunity to develop research in a serious way.”

Before taking up his appointment as President of DCU, Professor von Prondzynski was Professor of Law and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Hull, England (1991-2000). Previously he was also Lecturer in Industrial Relations at Trinity College Dublin (1980 - 1990).

You can learn more about the symposium at: (http://www.tcdlegaleducationsymposium.ie/) Higher education institutions on the island of Ireland are debating their future structures and course offerings In the light of the consideration of professional legal training by the Competition Authority (http://www.tca.ie/) and by the Legal Services Review Group in Northern Ireland (http://www.dfpni.gov.uk/index/law-and-regulation/review-of-legal-services) the future of the law school is not just a matter for the universities, but a subject of general interest.

This one- day symposium will bring together various parties with an interest in this future – students, academics, researchers, practitioners, economists, policy-makers and others.