Abstract:

Digitalization imposes new requirements on the legal profession, which significantly enhances the technocratic bias in the educational process. To avoid the danger of dehumanizing legal education, it is necessary to pay more serious attention to the ethical education of future lawyers. In the light of this formulation of the problem, the importance of psychological research on the life-meaning orientations of law students is actualized. In the Russian science in the last decade noticeable attention has been paid to the study of this problem. As an example, we will cite the research in the field of legal ethics by A.V. Taran, the research of professional elites in the university N.B. Karabushchenko, Odintsova M.A. and others. Our 2021 study continues to work in this direction.

The study involved 117 1st and 4th year law students. To analyze the data, we used the methods of value orientations of Sh.Schwartz and The Meaning-in-Life Orientations (MOL) of D.A. Leontyev (the result of adaptation of the test "Purpose in life" by J. Crambo and L. Makholik). To identify correlations between the methods, the Spearman's r-rank correlation coefficient (SPSS) was used.

As a result of the research, the 1st year students were found to have reliable correlations between the methods according to the scales: " Achievement" - "Process of life"; "Achievement" - "Locus of self-control"; “Achievement” - “Locus of control of life”; “Achievement” - “Meaningfulness of life” (the value of these scales varies from r = 0.249 to r = 0.288; at P˂=0.05), as well as correlations on the scales “Power”-“Process of life”; “Power-Locus of control of life” and “Power - Meaningfulness of life” (from r = 0.231 to r = 0.254; at P˂=0.05). The data obtained allow us to say that 1st year students are focused on success in mastering the profession (although they still have a vague idea of it) and demonstrate high ambitions; they are confident in themselves (they have a dominant sense of control over their lives, which is largely given to them by the parental care that remains at the moment. They have high expectations from their future profession, the choice of which seems to them prestigious and promising in terms of social status and material wealth.

Analysis of data for the 4th year showed the highest correlations on the scales: " Self-Direction " - "result"; " Self-Direction " - "Meaningfulness of life" (r = from 0.511 to r=0.565 at P˂=0.01);"Universalism"-“Locus of self-control”; “Universalism”-“Meaningfulness of life” (r = from 0.402 to r = 0.440 at P˂=0.05); "power"-"goals" (r = 0.379 P˂=0.05).The data obtained testifies to the release of future lawyers from the guardianship of the older generation, to the presence of rational ideas about their future profession, about their orientation towards their own strengths and capabilities. The relationship between the scales "Power" - "Goals" speaks of the desire for power, social status and material well-being. But at the same time, a sense of justice and social responsibility begins to form among young people, as evidenced by the data on the universalism scale.

Summing up, we can say that at the last stage of education, students undergo noticeable changes in value orientations, which indicate the formation of the foundations of professional ethics. The presence of such reserves is also evidenced by the data of comparable psychological studies.

Keywords:

Education, lawyers, ethics, moral psychology, value orientations.