ABSTRACT
The Bologna process has had a major impact on Spanish law faculties, where the law
curriculum has been adapted to the new system based on ECTS, the division between
undergraduate and postgraduate education and quality assessment. Once the Bologna
process came into force, it was no longer only about law but also about teaching skills
and thus behavioral learning and assessment. Since then legal education has begun to
play a role in Spain14 and it has also been acknowledged that the increasingly complex
legal system can no longer be taught at university. As a matter of fact, law faculties
cannot turn completely to practice either, since on the one hand this is in a constant
state of flux, and on the other it is easily mastered, at least when the practitioners have
a good theoretical grounding. The issue is therefore providing this basis, whose scope
ought to be informed by reality and so avoid hyper-complicated speculative theories in
favor of a more practical approach; i.e. taking into account what is going on in the
economy and society (Bizcarrondo, 2002, p. 275; Pe´rez, 2002, pp. 197-268;
Ribstein, 2011, pp. 1672-1676). In other words, it was time to shift from a rote-
teaching model of positive rules to learning what legal culture is, as proposed by
Merryman (1985), Friedman (1994) and others (Toharia, 2002, pp. 115-118).
