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Transnationalizing Mexican Legal Education: But, What About Students' Expectations?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Luis Fernando Perez Hurtado

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The number of Mexican institutions of higher education (hereinafter also referred to as “Institutions” or “IHE”) offering Bachelor's Degrees in Law has increased rapidly. For example, in the 1997–1998 academic year, there were 364 Institutions offering the basic law degree; by the 2006–2007 academic year, the number had increased to 930. It is as if, over the last ten years, each week a new IHE began offering a Bachelor's Degree in Law. During that same period, law school enrollment in Mexico increased from 170,210 to approximately 240,000. By 2003, the Bachelor's Degree in Law was the degree program with the highest enrollment in the country – 11 out of 100 students at the college level chose it.

Type
Section 1: ‘Same Ol’, Same Ol'?' Reflecting on Curricular Reform
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 6-7: Following the Call of the Wild: The Promises and Perils of Transnationalizing Legal Education , July 2009 , pp. 767 - 782
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Sources: 1997–98, author's estimation based on data from Dirección de Análisis y Sistemas de Información, SEP; 2006–07, data collected by the author, available at: www.educacionjuridica.org. Last accessed: 26 March 2009.Google Scholar

2 ANUIES, Anuario Estadístico 2003, Licenciatura en Universidades e Institutos Tecnológicos, Resúmenes y Series Históricas 17 (2003), available at: http://www.anuies.mx. Last accessed: 26 March 2009.Google Scholar

3 See Luis Fernando Perez Hurtado, An Overview of Mexico's System of Legal Education, Mexican Law Review (forthcoming March 2009).Google Scholar

4 See Luis Fernando Pérez Hurtado, The Next Generation of Mexican Lawyers: A Study of Mexico's System of Legal Education and its Law Students (2008) (unpublished J.S.D. dissertation, Stanford Law School, on file wih the Stanford University Library).Google Scholar

5 Students in full-time programs represent over 90% of the LED enrollment.Google Scholar

6 The observation dimensions and main variables follow: general characteristics (gender, age, program level, month and year of entrance to the LED, type of high school, socioeconomic status, scholarships, high school and LED grades, languages, and place of residence); choosing to study the Licenciatura en Derecho (other options before considering the LED, experiences that motivated the interest in a law degree, purpose and expectations for studying for the LED); choosing the IHE (other options before considering the current institution, selection of the specific IHE, advantages and disadvantages of legal education in current IHE); and practice of law (student-work experience, professional interests, perception of factors for getting a job, factors of professional success, and plans for further studies).Google Scholar

7 Estimation based on data from Dirección de Análisis y Sistemas de Información, SEP.Google Scholar

8 See ANUIES (www.anuies.mx), FIMPES (www.fimpes.org.mx), and SACS (www.sacs.org). Institutional members of these associations have followed a certification program that shows somehow their commitment to quality.Google Scholar

9 Guía Universitaria Reader's Digest, Edición Especial, Año 2, Número 2 (2004).Google Scholar

10 It is necessary to clarify two aspects regarding the Groups. First, we used these “quality” criteria because they allow us to divide the private Institutions into two groups with different characteristics. Not enough information about IHE was available to apply other grouping criteria. Furthermore, there were no generally accepted criteria for defining the quality of private Institutions, such as formal accreditation. The formal accreditation of Licenciaturas en Derecho began only in 2006. These circumstances led us to use the criteria described above.Google Scholar

Second, there are differences among IHE in the Public Group, due mainly to the perception that these Institutions differ in their prestige and in the academic experiences they provide to students. Nevertheless, most of public IHE belong to a university system, which means that they have access to economic and human resources for their development, and they benefit from that access. For instance, associations such as ANUIES consider the whole university system, not the IHE alone, for acceptance. Then, if the same criteria for dividing private IHE were applied to public IHE, most of them would be in a “Public 1” group. Few IHE would be in a “Public 2” group, and they would have less than 5% of the law students enrolled in public Institutions. For this reason, we placed them in a single group.Google Scholar

11 The random selection included the following modifications: (1) In the Public Group, we included UNAM Ciudad Universitaria because of the impact it has on many IHE at the national level. (2) A new sample was taken whenever two or more IHE from the same system of IHE were drawn, to avoid having Institutions with very similar characteristics and with access to the same economic and human resources.Google Scholar

12 This sampling method offers four advantages: (1) The strata division increases precision and allows us to have a substantial number of students in each stratum. (2) The cluster division assures a more efficient use of economic resources. (3) The inclusion of the totality of students in each cluster allows us to have a substantial number of students with different characteristics, and hence, the possibility to compare them. (4) The observation of all the elements in their context allows for the analysis of students, not isolated, but interacting with factors within their Institutions that may influence their decisions.Google Scholar

13 Most of the new law students start classes during those months. From 63,271 first-year law students during the 2004–2005 academic year, 55,108 (87%) stated their studies during that term. Source: Dirección de Información de la SEP.Google Scholar

14 Due to logistic and time problems, the visit and questionnaire application were performed at the end of the 2003–2004 academic year in four IHE.Google Scholar

15 We do not have any reason to think that the students that were absent the day of the questionnaire application may have different profiles from those that completed the questionnaire.Google Scholar

16 We were not able to personally apply the questionnaires in some institutions because some groups did not have class that day or the director decided not to interrupt classes that day. We did not collect from two institutions, both from the Private 2 Group. One of them, with approximately 40 students, did not return any completed questionnaires. The other institution did not have any students that semester; this is rather common in Group Private 2, so we decided to analyze the case instead of repeating the random selection of the Institutions.Google Scholar

17 The answers to this open-ended question were very difficult to code and classify, because they diverged greatly from a simple “I liked it”, to more elaborate answers such as: “Simply because I like to act with confidence and this program allows me to avoid many injustices by knowing the law and how I can avoid arbitrary actions of society and authorities. Besides I was a victim of an injustice in a car accident”, “Because some social situations that are in great crisis and because moral values are destroyed, young people with criteria and preparation to face them are needed, as well as with a great sense of rightness. I like the legal environment and diplomacy,” or “More than anything was helping people, and since I had knowledge of the program it caught my attention. The lawyer as a mediator, as judge, etc. is what I like the most. I think lawyers are a very good model although they have lost their professionalism and ethics.”Google Scholar

18 The responses of 79.7% of students fell into only one general category, while 18.4% fell into two general topics and 1.9% three general topics. 1.8% of the students did not answer this question.Google Scholar

19 Not all opinions about lawyers are negative. In other categories good comments are made about them and some examples are given (“Once I saw how a lawyer helped a family free of charge and this motivated me to do something for my fellow man”).Google Scholar

20 “Visiting civil and criminal courts.”Google Scholar

21 “When an uncle was fired and I accompanied him to the labor courts with his lawyer.”Google Scholar

22 “I worked as a secretary in a legal firm and I liked it,” “I was interested in the LED because I work in the courts.”Google Scholar

23 “I worked for 2 years in a company where I worked with lawyers and that created my admiration for them.”Google Scholar

24 “In relation to a lawsuit made against a company I worked for, my benefits were not paid completely so I sued them and I won; I liked it a lot because I was in all the labor courts, and people many times don't have the money to pay a lawyer or someone that represents them.”Google Scholar

25 In this group we also included some students who took law courses while they studied for a different bachelor's degree and that is why they transferred, or attended law classes as an occasional student before deciding which academic program to study and law caught their attention (“I attended a tax law class and I loved law, the code, and the discussion was very good”).Google Scholar

26 “The law class we had in high school,” “I liked social sciences and humanities in high school,” “The way they taught me in high school how justice was delivered.”Google Scholar

27 “Influence of a high school teacher who was a lawyer, his way of teaching and his work as a lawyer.”Google Scholar

28 “I consider that the bachelor in law should be studied by most if not all people, because of its relevance.”Google Scholar

29 “Because I am attracted to everything related to criminal law,” “I am a public accountant and I like everything related to tax and labor law.”Google Scholar

30 “I like law very much, besides it is not all about law issues but also social, economic, cultural and political issues; it is a very complete program.”Google Scholar

31 “The high cultural level we get compared to other degrees.”Google Scholar

32 “I don't like math or English, I also don't like computer skills, arts and management, etc.”Google Scholar

33 “The need to know in order to defend myself and others; it can give a sense of safety and altruism at the same time.”Google Scholar

34 “I think that by being a lawyer I have my options open to enter almost any work field.”Google Scholar

35 “I am a public accountant and I wish to combine both degrees”, “Ideal complement for my first degree and I really like this program.”Google Scholar

36 “I want to be a public servant or work in politics, and I believe that this is an excellent degree to have access into politics”, “By studying law, I can then become a criminologist.”Google Scholar

37 “I wanted a broad job offer”, “What made me interested in law was that I realized that no one is exempt from having legal problems and needing legal counsel, because problems are present even in your own family”. We noted that a high percentage of these students tend to infer that the diversity of study branches is synonymous with a diversity of job opportunities.Google Scholar

38 “I always found the job of a lawyer interesting and in a certain way exciting.”Google Scholar

39 “I like the environment where a lawyer works.”Google Scholar

40 “Because they say that a good lawyer makes good money.”Google Scholar

41 “I think that a lawyer is a person people respect and a base point of society”, “The importance it has in society, the leadership they show managing others.”Google Scholar

42 “It was something spontaneous,” “Since I was young, I wanted to study law,” “It simply caught my attention.”Google Scholar

43 We can also infer from the answers that these characteristics are discovered by the students themselves, other people mention them (“I asked the people I know what they thought I would be good at and 90% said as a lawyer, I thought about it, did my research and fell in love with my program,” “Thanks to my friends, because I argued too much and said that I wouldn't be a bad lawyer because I had character”), or they discover it in professional counseling.Google Scholar