Internationalising Legal Education in Belgium: Why Are We Doing It?

Abstract

Internationalisation of legal education is a topical yet little discussed issue in Belgium. The issues of how international law curricula should be arises in connection with the transition from a content-based to a skill-based approach, a horizontal evolution in European higher education which also concerns legal education. While there is a diffuse consensus among both practitioners and academics that some degree of internationalisation is a good thing, law schools do not necessarily have a clear vision of what internationalisation is precisely good for. This may explain a certain degree of diversity in the degree and modalities of internationalisation among Belgian law schools.

This chapter is structured as follows. First, the introduction sets the scene by presenting the Belgian context for the debate on internationalisation of legal education. Then, I discuss how the need for internationalisation is perceived and examine how various factors influence this perception. Based on interviews conducted with an indicative rather than a representative sample of practitioners and academics based in Belgium, the following section offers a digest of different views on what a ‘global lawyer’ is and describes the perceived need for such lawyers on the Belgian market. I then analyse how law schools in Belgium have responded to such a need. Finally, a different aspect of internationalisation is considered, namely mobility of legal practitioners after they have completed their legal education.