Developing high-quality legal talent requires more than relying on a bachelor’s degree

During the discussion session at the National Assembly on November 25, 2025, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Hoa Binh stated the orientation to review and tighten the conditions for opening majors for a number of specific fields such as medicine and law in order to concentrate training resources at qualified institutions. Behind this orientation is a bigger question:  how to ensure the quality of human resources in professions where professional errors can directly affect the legitimate rights and interests of people and organizations [1].

Source: Vietnam Lawyer Journ

From a quantitative perspective[2], the law industry does not seem to have a shortage of supply. However, from a quality perspective, many businesses, law firms and employers are facing a different reality: it is not easy to find new graduates who can quickly participate in professional work effectively.

That shows that the problem of law training in Vietnam today no longer lies in the scale of training. The problem lies in the fact that the training system has not really created a career development chain capable of transforming knowledge in the lecture hall into practical competence.

The legal profession is a profession of competence, not only of knowledge

Unlike many disciplines that can measure training results mainly by the amount of knowledge acquired, the legal profession requires a simultaneous combination of many different classes of competencies.

A legal practitioner does not only need to understand the legal regulations. They must also know how to analyze events, identify risks, do legal research, formulate arguments, draft documents, negotiate, communicate with customers and provide solutions in situations where there is often no absolute right or wrong answer.

In particular, the legal profession is also a profession of responsibility. An error in legal advice, an inadequately drafted contract clause or an inaccurate legal judgment can lead to significant financial losses or affect the legitimate interests of others.

Therefore, in many countries, law training is always seen as a process of forming professional competencies rather than a simple process of imparting knowledge. Law students not only study law but are also trained to think like a legal practitioner.

Meanwhile, the reality of training in Vietnam is still significantly influenced by the traditional approach model, in which the impartment of legal knowledge is often placed at the center. As a result, many students are able to grasp the regulation but have difficulty applying it to a specific real-life situation.

The gap between "knowing the law" and "practicing law" is the biggest gap that the current training system needs to narrow.

Learners: the first foundation of quality training

When discussing the quality of training, attention is often focused on the curriculum, lecturers or facilities. However, an equally important factor is often overlooked: the learner.

The legal profession is a profession that requires a long-term accumulation process. Learners have to read a large amount of materials, regularly update new regulations, practice research, writing and critical thinking skills for many years in a row. This is not an environment that is suitable for a coping learning mindset or the expectation of quick results.

Recruitment practices show that students who do well in their careers are often not the ones who only have high grades. What they often have in common is a love of reading, self-study habits, the ability to think logically, perseverance with complex problems, and a spirit of actively seeking opportunities for practical experience.

On the contrary, when choosing law only because of social trends or expectations of a stable career without a full understanding of the specifics of the job, it is easy for learners to lose motivation in the learning process and find it difficult to develop the necessary professional competencies.

Therefore, one of the most important tasks of the training system is not only to teach law but also to help learners understand the legal profession correctly before entering the profession.

Career orientation needs to be implemented early, helping learners identify their own suitability, understand the actual requirements of the profession and build long-term learning motivation. This is the first foundation of training quality but also the link that is most often overlooked.

Law school: from a place to impart knowledge to a place to form competencies

If the learner is the starting point, then law school must be at the center of the process of forming professional competencies.

In recent years, Vietnam's higher education has undergone many changes in the direction of approaching output standards. However, the gap between the announced output standards and the actual capacity of graduates is still relatively large.

One of the reasons is that training is still more about providing knowledge than designing learning experiences to form skills. Many vocational skills modules still account for a modest proportion of the training program. In many cases, the teaching of skills is carried out by people with little practical professional experience. Meanwhile, increasingly important skills such as data research, legal technology application, e-contract analysis, digital risk management or the use of artificial intelligence in legal work have not been adequately focused.

More notably, internships at many training institutions are still not really considered a core component of the curriculum. Many students complete the internship without being assigned professional tasks, without a guidance mechanism and without a clear competency assessment system. This leads to a paradox: students can complete their training but still lack the opportunity to experience basic career situations before entering the labor market.

The problem is not only to increase the number of practical modules but to build a training model based on professional competencies, in which students are placed in real situations, assigned tasks, given feedback and evaluated according to criteria close to the requirements of the profession.

Source: Ho Chi Minh City Law Newspaper 

Businesses and organizations practicing law: the missing link in the training ecosystem

One of the biggest limitations of current law training is that the connection between schools and employers is still relatively loose.

In fact, businesses, law offices and law firms are the final place to verify the quality of training. However, the role of these subjects in the training process has not been fully exploited.

Many units receiving interns still consider internship activities as the responsibility of the university. On the contrary, many training institutions have not yet established long-term cooperation programs for businesses to participate more deeply in the process of building learning programs, skill assessments or practical guidance.

As a result, graduates often have to go through a long period of "retraining" when entering the real work environment. This fact shows that legal training cannot end at the university gate. The process of forming professional competencies needs to be continued in the workplace through a mechanism of guidance, mentoring and assignment with a roadmap.

From the perspective of human resource management, businesses and legal practice organizations need to consider internal training activities as part of their human resource development strategy instead of an incurred cost. Tools such as standard text templates, internal review processes, career advising mechanisms, or complex assignment pathways can all help bridge the gap between training and practice. More importantly, this is also a way for businesses to actively participate in the formation of human resources that they will use in the future.

Tightening the conditions for opening the industry is necessary but not enough

The orientation of tightening the conditions for opening a law major can contribute to improving the quality of training by focusing resources on qualified institutions. However, this is unlikely to be the only solution.

The quality of legal personnel is not determined by the number of training schools. Quality is determined by whether the training system creates a continuous and effective career development chain.

That sequence must start with the right learner orientation, continue with a competency-based training program, supported by a practical environment and perfected through the process of career guidance in the workplace.

In other words, the core issue is not how many bachelors of law can be trained each year, but how many people can be trained who are capable of becoming competent lawyers or real legal experts.

When the relationship between learners, schools and businesses is redesigned in the direction of more cohesion and companionship, the quality of training will no longer depend on the individual efforts. At that time, legal training really becomes the process of forming a career, rather than merely the process of granting a university degree.

And only then can society expect a team of legal personnel who are capable of meeting the increasing requirements of the economy and of a modern rule of law state.