Application of Mock-Court as an Interdisciplinary Model for Consolidation of Professional Training of Law Students

This study deals with solving the current problem of pedagogy of high school – consolidation of theoretical and practical approaches to ensure the quality of professional training of law students. According to the author, the introduction of simulation modelling technologies in training courses allows enhancing interdisciplinarity in teaching, which is an important way of meeting the dynamic needs of students in close connection of theoretical and practical blocks of professional training of future specialists. The experience of the American Bar Association on the future of legal education has suggested the idea of applying mock-court as interdisciplinary models. Experimental application of mock-court was tested in the courses “Criminal Law” and “Civil Law”, which are part of the block of special disciplines of the educational and professional training program in specialty 081 “Law”. Mathematical data processing and STATA software were used to analyse the results obtained and to objectively consider the dynamics of changes in personality-organizational, operational-activity, cognitive-competence, personality-motivational, information-technological, linguistic-communicative components. The study showed the effectiveness of the use of mock-court on the development of all components of the readiness of law students for professional socialization. The authors concluded that the application of mock-court in the professional training of future lawyers contributes to feedback increasing students’ educational motivation and allows monitoring of changes in student development. This model can be applied to enhance interdisciplinarity in the teaching of other courses of the block of special subjects of professional training of lawyers.