Page 8 - Law School of the Future

exam result) students are implicitly required to use (and improve) their writing and research

skills, as well as their public speaking abilities.
• The “Open Books”’ exam modality – A fearful exam with nothing else than a white

paper between the student and the professor during the exam could be challenging for the

student’s memory, but not for the improvement of his legal reasoning. In many European
law schools, final exams are organized in being written and basing on open questions (often
consisting in a real case which students are required to solve). Nevertheless, the real

peculiarity of this type of exam is that students are allowed to consult their notes, books

and even the Internet. In the future, probably, they will have to solve difficult questions
with a lot of materials: it is important to start working in this way also during their

university studies.
Ø Foreign languages improvement by Universities.

Before being innovative, we need to be, at least, on the same level of the other European States
(if not of the world!). Italy is currently one of the European Countries with the fewest number

of English speaker. Knowledge of English and other world-spoken languages should be
improved at the academic level.

• Universities (like Unisi) shall oblige students to achieve an at least B2 certificate level of

English (FIRST Certificate, IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC), allowing them to follow
language courses for the exam preparation covered by the students’ loans. This certificate

shall be followed by a mandatory class on legal English, in order to favour employment
and opportunities for early undergraduates. Many language-assessment organizations

provide exams for certificating legal language levels of foreign students all around the
world (i.e. Cambridge ILEC, TOLES).

• Those students who already master a second language (and have achieved the

overmentioned certificate) should be able to follow an equally covered course on another
foreign language, in order to achieve another linguistic certificate.

• Universities shall implement foreign languages’, at least for optional classes. Examples
could be: English, French and Spanish-spoken classes for optional subjects in the

international and comparative fields; German-spoken classes for optional subjects in the

criminal and civil fields.

2. Secondly, for what concerns employment, we think Law students of today are too focused on

theory and don’t have instruments for acknowledging legal practice – and, in general, the world

outside the University.