Challenges to Legal Education in the Context of Lithuania’s Civil Service Modernization

Abstract

Since 2008 Lithuanian political and administrative elites are engaged in debates over reforming the civil service of Lithuania. The result of these debates is the proposed new edition of the Law on Civil Service which was submitted for parliamentary approval in 2015. The bill envisages a fundamental review of many practices in the civil service on Lithuania. One of those is the shift in focus from stressing formal education to stressing competence evaluation in the process of civil servants selection, training and career. However, in most respects Lithuanian public administration remains firmly in the grips of the continental legal tradition and this means that large proportion of the civil service corps is made up of specialists with legal education. There are no reasons to assume that this would be changing, and therefore a need for a large number of lawyers in the civil service will remain. In parallel, the Lithuanian legal education is strictly regulated, primarily to cater to the need of the Judiciary branch of the government. And thus the changing nature of employment requirements in the Executive creates a divergence of labour market needs with regard to legal qualifications. And this consequently poses a series of challenges to higher education institutions training lawyers. In this article we conceptualize the challenges that are emerging in the context of the modernization of the Civil Service of Lithuania.