Unit 8. Legal education in Russia and abroad

VOCABULARY

Exercise 1. Read and translate the words.

Law school, legal education, prospective, applicant, to enter a law school, to graduate from, admission requirements, personal application form, to get a degree, grade point average, Law School Admissions Test, Unified State Examination, extra-curricular experience.

Exercise 2. Mini-poll. Test your knowledge about the American system of legal education. Choose between:

Y = Yes, I agree.

N = No, I disagree.

Z = I have no idea, I don’t know.

Your opinion	Y, N, Z
American admission requirements differ greatly from Russian ones.
Legal education in the USA is free.
Application form is standard for all law schools.
You need a good recommendation if you want to enter a law school in the USA.
The US law schools do not require official records of your previous study.
All American school-leavers pass a great number of exams in order to enter a law school.
You must pay for processing your application.

READING

Exercise 3. Read the text below and compare the information with your ideas. What new information did you get?

Legal education in the United States begins at the graduate level. Students wishing to get a law degree must earn a four year undergraduate degree from a nationally-accredited college or university. In addition, prospective students must take the standardized Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) or an equivalent exam. The LSAT is used solely for entrance to law schools and does

not apply toward admission to any other graduate program. Due to the tremendous number of applications received each year, the United States law schools rarely grant personal interviews to assess the qualifications of applicants. Instead, law schools consider students undergraduate grade point average (GPA), their LSAT score, personal recommendations, and essays or personal statements.

The United States law schools also weigh the applicant's motivation, leadership ability, work or extra-curricular experience, family, cultural and community background, financial ability in making admissions decisions. In the United States, unlike England, successful completion of another graduate course of study alone does not assure admittance to a law school. A graduate degree or even a doctorate in another field is merely one more factor that the school will consider when deciding whether to admit an applicant.

Exercise 4. Let’s compare Russian and American admission requirements. Look through the following sentences and fill in the table below with the statements true for the Russian or American systems of legal education.

1. Legal education is free in general.

2. Proof of financial ability is one of the compulsory admission requirements.

3. All applicants must have recommendations from their teachers.

4. University applicants write a special essay about themselves or on one of the suggested topics.

5. Applicants are chosen on the basis of secondary school records and the results of the Unified State Examination.

6. Most law schools evaluate a student’s academic performance based on their grade point average and his/her LSAT score.

7. A bachelor’s degree in law is usually four years but can range from two to six years and certifies full-time studies within a particular subject.