Small Goes Global: The Internationalisation of Legal Education in Ireland

Abstract

In Ireland, legal education is delivered via a mix of university law schools, institutes of technology, and professional providers. Until recently, legal education and the profession were largely inward looking and geared at producing practitioners for domestic legal work. This was facilitated by low levels of external competition and structural attributes of the profession enabling protection from market forces. Today, Irish legal education and legal practice are undergoing a slow change with an increasing ‘internationalised’ outlook. The context of a small market and jurisdiction with limited reach has not prevented Irish law schools and the legal profession from ‘going global’ – in actual fact, they have clearly been committed to embrace the possibilities arising from a greater internationalisation of legal education (IOLE).

The aim of this chapter is to provide clear indications of this phenomenon under three sections. The first section will present the existing legal education and legal training model, as well as identify indicators of their internationalisation. The second section will deal with the debate about IOLE in Ireland. In the third section, the practicalities of IOLE will be examined mainly through a survey of the educational offering provided by law schools across the country with regard to internationalisation. Finally, we will address the issue of the necessity of IOLE in order to promote ‘the global lawyer’ in concluding remarks.

Keywords: Ireland, legal education, internationalisation, global, lawyer, training