Dmitriy I. Meyer's Ideas and their Significance for Contemporary Legal Education

The article is devoted to the analysis of the interrelationship between historical and traditional principles of Russian law and Russian legal education. The authors demonstrate the relevance of Prof. Dmitriy I. Meyer’s ideas for training future lawyers and modern legal education. The paper justifies the obligatory connection between the legal theory and practice in the learning process, which originates from Dmitriy Meyer’s understanding of a practice-oriented education. A legal clinic forms a necessary basis for the development of Dmitriy I. Meyer’s idea regarding the interrelationship between practical work and legal education. Dmitriy I. Meyer’s opinion concerning the dependence of the “measure of freedom” on the “legal views of the people that in turn are inextricably linked with the moral law, i.e. with the concepts of what is just and what is unjust,” is relevant for the development of modern client-oriented legal education. Dmitriy I. Meyer, as well as his contemporaries and followers, have drawn attention to the quality of normative texts, which is important due to the fact that law schools do not pay attention to such a specialization in legal education as a “norm-writer.” Today, the concept of combining practice and theory in training lawyers has become important, which requires reference to Dmitriy I. Meyer and other predecessors on the issue of combining theoretical and practical foundations in legal education. It is impossible to become a highly qualified specialist in the field of jurisprudence with a complex of necessary general cultural and professional competencies without the ability to resolve practical cases, without using theoretical knowledge in practice, without the corresponding knowledge of digital technologies in the field of jurisprudence, without the ability to write normative texts.