Business Law Practice Questions and Exercises, Companion Teaching Material for the 21st Century Legal Education Series

Author: Lin Jia
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: Faced with various phenomena in higher legal education, we feel confused and have many concerns: Ten years ago, law was considered one of the "hot majors," but it has long disappeared from the current list of popular majors. Law was originally a highly specialized field, but many employers now feel that law graduates lack specialization. Many students spend four years studying law, knowing numerous legal terms, but when asked how to handle a case, they can speak fluently and fluently, full of professional jargon, even mentioning German regulations or some new theories in the United States, but they don’t know how China regulates it or how to solve the case that occurs in China. Etc. This phenomenon can be referred to as "the non-professionalization of professional education." In 2005, Professor He Weifang announced online that he would no longer admit graduate students, challenging the current trend of overly emphasizing public courses in postgraduate entrance exams while neglecting students' interest in their majors. These phenomena in legal education may be related to the broader educational context. Many liberal arts students spend half their time in university studying foreign languages and the other half playing games. Because the final exams in liberal arts are relatively easy, it is not a problem for students to pass with credits. Many students simply cram for exams a month or even a week before the exam, so some jokingly say that some liberal arts students actually study for only eight months or even less during their four years of university. While we criticize exam-oriented education and emphasize quality-oriented education, we have neglected professional education. This "non-specialization" has caused many legal educators and practitioners to worry and be uneasy. If this continues, it will not only have a negative impact on our law students but, in the extreme, may harm the legal education in our country. Therefore, we suggest that law students should still study their majors well and refine this highly specialized major into their own expertise, so that they can use their professionalism to seek survival and respect.
University students also do exercises? Some people, especially liberal arts students, might ask back with a mocking tone. For science and engineering students, doing exercises and experiments during their studies is very common, but in liberal arts schools and departments, doing exercises seems to be a rare thing, and some students even feel that university is fundamentally different from high school. However, we have specifically compiled this "Exercise Collection" for law students, advocating that law students should also take simultaneous exercises and self-assessments during their regular studies. This idea is based on the doubts and concerns mentioned above. We hope that through simultaneous exercises, we can help and encourage students to truly master the knowledge of their discipline, familiarize themselves with the current laws of our country, and gain some understanding of cutting-edge academic issues. On a larger scale, we want to make some effort for the "professional education" of legal education. Specifically, this book aims to achieve the following goals:
1. Help students systematically master the knowledge of their discipline. Completing a course is not just about getting credits; to truly grasp the "essentials" of the discipline, at least some foundational work is needed. This "Exercise Collection" includes a "Knowledge Logic Map" section, which details the logical relationships between different knowledge points in a chapter. It also provides various types of self-assessment questions, highlighting key points and offering detailed and insightful answer analyses. This not only broadens students' horizons but also helps them understand the different forms of exam questions and master their problem-solving methods, while also enhancing their adaptability. In addition to the self-assessment questions for each chapter, the book also includes three sets of mock exams, allowing students to test their learning outcomes after completing the course.
2. Help students pass the National Judicial Examination. After systematically studying law for four years, it should be a matter of course for law students to pass the National Judicial Examination, but in reality, this is not the case, which indicates that some students' professional studies are superficial. This "Exercise Collection" selects some classic questions from past National Judicial Examination (Lawyer Qualification Exam) papers to help students understand the difficulty, perspective, and format of the exam, enabling targeted study and review.
3. Help students prepare for postgraduate entrance exams. On one hand, it selects some questions from past postgraduate entrance exam papers of top law schools (such as Renmin University of China, Peking University, and China University of Political Science and Law). On the other hand, this book includes a special "Essay and In-depth Thinking Questions" section to broaden students' academic horizons and provide significant help in mastering the methods and skills for answering essay questions.
In summary, our approach is to use a seemingly "vulgar" method—simultaneous exercises that resemble an "exam-oriented education" model—to achieve our grand but unpretentious goal of strengthening "professional education." This "Exercise Collection" consists of 14 books, corresponding to 14 core law courses, and is a supplementary teaching material for the "21st Century Law Series Textbooks." It must be mentioned that since its publication in 2000, the "21st Century Law Series Textbooks" have been widely used by teachers and students in numerous law schools across the country. Some textbooks, such as Professor Wang Liming's "Civil Law," have sold over 300,000 copies, and the average sales volume of the 14 core course textbooks is also over 100,000 copies. Behind these 100,000 copies are 100,000 or more readers. The love and support of so many readers make us feel a great sense of responsibility. Our only way to repay this is to continuously improve our service!
The "21st Century Law Series Textbooks" now have multiple sub-series, including core course textbooks, core course teaching reference books, elective course textbooks, case analysis textbooks, and bilingual textbooks, with over 80 titles in total. This "Exercise Collection" has now been added. The purpose of all these varieties is the same: to provide more choices for teachers and students who use our textbooks and to meet their diverse needs. We hope that this large-scale "21st Century Law Series Textbooks" can be continuously supplemented and improved, satisfying the teachers and students who use it, and making our country's legal "professional education" the effort it deserves!