Practice Elements in the Hungarian Legal Education System

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to analyze certain features of the Hungarian legal education system with special regard to the role of practice. In its first parts it highlights those institutional and sociological dynamics that touched upon legal education during the last decades and briefly introduce the reader into the legal background of legal education. Concerning the role of practice the paper examines the role of seminary education compared to the general system of “lectures” as well as the recent constellation of clinical legal education in Hungary in detail. As conclusion, the paper argues that the growth of practice-oriented ways of teaching should lead toward the general acceptance of an educational conception in which theory and practice can work in harmony.

Keywords: legal education, clinical legal education, practice in legal education, skill training