Required legal skills for the 21st century lawyer: legal education at a crossroads

Abstract

More and more, the world is moving towards an increasingly inter-dependent legal jurisdiction. While national legal cultures and legal jurisdictions continue to exist, legal practitioners and educators are increasingly required to know and understand the international implications of imposing national laws. At the same time, legal education and legal culture has remained seemingly unchanged in the wake of the reality of legal practice in the 21st century. This article discusses the results of a research project undertaken with the support of City University of Hong Kong. The focus of the research project is a market assessment of the required legal skills for lawyers in the 21st century. In this first article, I discuss the current state of the research findings and its implications for the skills required of 21st century lawyers and the future of legal education.