AY 2006-2007 Projects - Europe and Eurasia

Country                     Croatia
City                            Rijeka
Host Institution         University of Rijeka

Project Description
In 2005-2006 an EL Fellow started working with all four law faculties in Croatia, delivering intensive week-long courses on oral skills, consulting on legal clinics and training students to participate in international moot courts, including the Jessup Moot
Court Competition (an internationally-recognized competition which is held in the U.S.).  The Fellow’s work in bringing the 4 law faculties together to cooperate and cross-fertilize is already ground-breaking given Croatia's vertical university structure. In 2006-2007, under the Fellow’s guidance, the trained students in Rijeka (with critical moot court
experience) will assist the other law faculties in Croatia to recruit and prepare their students for the Jessup Competition.  The Fellow will work with staff from each of the 4 law faculties in carrying out the applied oral legal English course as part of their  program. The current Fellow has concluded teaching an oral skills seminar at each of the universities and is recruiting students for a first-ever nationwide oral skills competition in January. This competition will  launch oral skills competitions at all of the universities and equip the legal English teachers with the necessary training in Jessup methods and
methodology in order for them to be the point person for the teams in the future. In 2006-2007, the Fellow will organize oral competitions for law faculty students that include teams from Croatia and neighboring countries of Serbia and Slovenia.  The Fellow will also focus on training faculty and assisting with efforts to reform the law faculty curricula so that it is more practice-oriented. Currently, the curricula are primarily theory-oriented. The Fellow will also work on establishing an in-service professional development center for judges and practicing lawyers with a legal English component based at the Law Faculty in Zagreb. In addition, s/he will continue current practice of providing intensive oral legal English courses at English departments in Croatia.