The legal education at the undergraduate level should provide students with the ability of logical thinking, problem solving skills, the ability to work in a team, communication skills and the ability to study by themselves, rather than providing detailed knowledge about the law. For the training of such skills, beyond the framework of the individual college classes, it is effective to provide a forum to compete with students of other universities or countries in intercollegiate competitions.
The Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition is an example of such forum. The competition is a two-day annual competition and 270 students from 17 Japanese and Australian universities participated in 9th competition of 2010. We conduct arbitration of an international business dispute on the first day and cross border business negotiation on the second day (For more details of the competition, please see my article in English available at http://www.jcaa.or.jp/e/arbitration/docs/news26.pdf).
Participants, during approximately two months, prepare very diligently in cooperation with teammates. They very eagerly research relevant materials, discuss with teammates, and repeatedly practice their presentation. In such process, participants hone their ability of logical thinking and communication and presentation skills and learn the difficulty and joy of working in teams. Taking the form of intercollegiate competition will give a strong motivation to the participants. Also, they may encounter more different style, idea and culture by competing with participants from other universities.
In other countries such as US or some European countries, there are various national and international intercollegiate competitions in the field of legal education. Considering the great educational effect of intercollegiate competitions, such competition is expected to increase also in Japan.
抄録全体を表示