Abstract:
Many are the critiques moved to the way in which law school prepare to the professions, even if for the majority of them the activities of attorney, solicitor, judge, and notary represent the most probable future after the university.
In Civil Law countries, courses normally consist of a general, often theoretical presentation of the rules governing a specific field of law: Private Law, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, etc. Many students, even in the best Schools, end their studies with no possibility of studying or reading a contract, a complaint, the by-laws of a company, let alone writing a clause.
In the Pontifical University of Lateran, we tried to allow ALL students to face the actual matters that legal professionals have to face every day, creating a “Notarial Law” course in which subjects already studies in the first years (Private Law, Commercial Law, International Private Law) are presented according a totally different approach, i.e. analysing real contracts, by-laws, or the way in which Public Registers and Courts actually operate. As Felix Frankfurter said, “law and the lawyers are what the law schools make them”. An exclusively dogmatic approach is not useful to prepare students to the profession; anyway, it is necessary not do divide them into too practical specializations, not linked to the whole corpus of their studies and contrary to the cultural aim of a Law School, that should never coincide with a merely professional training.
Speaker:
Prof. Lorenzo Cavalaglio, Professor, Pontifical University of Lateran (Rome)
Lorenzo Cavalaglio, J.D. (1995, University of Rome “La Sapienza”), Ph.D. (1999, University of Florence) J.C.D (2014, Pontifical Lateran University). Professor in the School of Law of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, he is also Civil Law Notary in Rome. He wrote two books: “La formazione del contratto. Normative di protezione ed efficienza economica” (2006), dealing with formation of contracts in Italian and International Law, and “La fondazione fiduciaria. Struttura e funzione della destinazione patrimoniale” (2015), dealing with foundations, fiduciary agreements and trusts in Comparative Law. He wrote several articles and essays about trusts, contracts, succession law, legal traditions,
Law and Literature. Member of the ASCL (American Society of Comparative Law), “Association Henri Capitant – Amis de la Culture Juridique Française” (Paris), “Société de Legislation Comparée” (Paris) and SLS (Society of Legal Scholars, London). He gave lectures in several congresses, in Europe and in the U.S.A (Cambridge University, Sciences-Po, Georgetown University, Tulane University).