ANDREJ LANG

From Lecture Halls to Courtrooms: The Role of Legal Education from a Comparative Perspective

The presentation examines the role of legal education from a comparative perspective. It juxtaposes the German Staatsexamen model, built on the doctrinal mastery of positive law, with the American model, grounded in interdisciplinary inquiry. Each model captures something essential about legal education, yet both took shape a century ago, and fail to fully meet contemporary demands. The presentation argues in favor of a more integrated model of legal education that 1) integrates comparative and international perspectives into the curriculum across a wide range of subjects, 2) teaches students interdisciplinary competence to enable fruitful conversations with other disciplines, and 3) emphasizes the civic responsibility of lawyers in the liberal constitutional order. The presentation suggests that the rise of generative AI only sharpens this diagnosis: it strengthens the case for teaching critical thinking, sound judgment, and civic responsibility to allow future lawyers 1) to detect the hallucinations of a language model and to take responsibility for a legal decision and 2) to understand the technical, ethical, political, and economic underpinnings of AI technology.

Andrej Lang is University Professor of Public Law at Chemnitz University of Technology, specialising in public economic law. His research examines German, European, and international public law from a theory-driven, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspective.

His work focuses in particular on the legal structures of the European and international economic order, constitutional and institutional law, and the protection of fundamental and human rights. In his research and teaching, he engages with the relationship between legal education and legal practice across different legal systems.