Introduction to Modernising European Legal Education (MELE)—Innovative Strategies to Address Urgent Cross-Cutting Challenges

This introduction provides an overview of the contents of the edited volume Modernising European Legal Education (MELE)—Innovative strategies to address urgent cross-cutting challenges. The volume contains sections on Law and Education Innovation, Law and Gender, Law and the Climate Crisis, Law and Datafication, as well as Law and COVID-19. The purpose of this volume is to share the insights of this Strategic Partnership for Higher Education funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+programme and make them available to a broad public. The volume starts with the summary of an empirical survey at 14 different European law faculties at universities in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany, Lithuania, North Macedonia, and Spain on the status of teaching transversal competences in legal studies. Throughout the sections and individual chapters, this edited volume responds to specific aspects highlighted through the survey. Beyond that it engages with relevant topics identified in the research and educational practice of the consortium members. The rapid and profound transitions shaping societies at the beginning of the twenty-first century also come with a substantive influence on the legal profession. Reconsideration of the legal discipline is therefore needed to identify the skills and knowledge that future lawyers must be equipped with to successfully engage with this changed reality