The article is devoted to identifying the key European integration directions of reforming modern national legal education. The issue of improving the quality of legal education has remained relevant for more than a decade for all countries regardless of the level of economic and social development. In a narrow sense, the relevant issues are closely related to the integration of legal education, and in a broader sense – to globalisation, because, on the one hand, legal education must comply with international standards and best educational practices, and on the other hand, the global problem of nostrification needs to be addressed. A wide range of both domestic and foreign scientific research is devoted to the reform of legal education, but there is a pattern of gradual reduction of such developments and redistribution of attention of the scientific community to certain ‘moments’ of legal didactics and parameters of legal education.
The article is original and combines the analysis of scientific results of national and foreign scholars with the formulation of new or improved proposals for European integration reform of national legal education. The main areas of research by national scholars on the integration of legal education and the main shortcomings in the training of national lawyers are identified. Particular attention is paid to the identification of “gaps” in the study of possible vectors of further European integration evolution of Ukrainian legal education. The author considers such key areas of European integration of legal education as improving the quality of education, combining the implementation of international norms and standards with the development and implementation of innovations, international cooperation, development of practical skills and knowledge (at least basic) of legal norms of other countries. The study proposes a number of key areas of reform activity in relation to the European integration of national legal education, in particular in the context of practice-oriented training, reduction of the content of educational programmes in combination with their integration into the European legal area and improvement of the education quality, improvement of analytical and logical skills of lawyers, and also the impact on the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.