ROLE PROGRAM GAMES AS A METHODOLOGY FOR PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCES ACQUISITION

With the establishment of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) efforts are being made to change the forms of learning and to establish new teaching methods, with the aim of helping students to acquire the skills needed for the future development of their profession.

Since the objective of the law school is to train graduates in consulting, representation and legal defense, the giving of public faith, public management, conciliation and arbitration and to judge and execute judgments, teaching methodologies should be aimed at training future lawyers, notaries, prosecutors and judges. In order to facilitate understanding of the unitary character of the legal system and the interdisciplinary situations and legal problems we propose implementing role program games (RPGs) as a methodology to provide greater understanding of the roles of the different legal agents and their modus operandi.

The different case studies are to be posing in the classroom, and then students are divided into groups, giving each of them a role to be represented in a "mock trial" of the case that has been raised in class. Over two weeks each student will prepare his role, and after this time the "mock trial" will be held in class, there will be lawyers from opposite sides, prosecutor in criminal cases, court clerks, and a judge. After the allegations of lawyers have been made and evidence has been presented, the judge will make a decision and issue a judgment.

The method aims to put students in the roles of the different legal agents, making practical everything that is taught in theory, helping them acquire generic skills of legal practice.