To be a candidate in Brazil: Towards a new legal profession?

This proposal is one of the results of a research on Rio de Janeiro State School of Magistracy (called EMERJ). Two data sources will to be considered: (1) nine focus groups with about approximately sixty EMERJ students in May 2009 and September 2011, and (2) a census-type research on 750 files of all students active at the EMERJ on mid 2009.

Unlike most of the professional schools, especially in continental tradition, the main activity of EMERJ is to be a preparation course. Lasting three years, EMERJ prepares at once nearly seven hundred students to the magistracy's admission examination. Actually, EMERJ acts inside a huge preparation market, once the access to legal public work is done almost only by bureaucratically selected civil servants, well paid and stable.

Numerous legal careers may only be started following the success on a public competition examination. Not only the judges, but also all the public attorneys, state and legal aid lawyers are organized into bureaucratic corps. Brazil additionally counts with one of the highest number of law schools in the world, and an “army” of law graduates, which in great number seek a public legal career.

The point this proposition wants to stress, based on the collected data in the EMERJ case, is the creation of a new socio-professional group: the candidates. Driven by a very competitive and morally hostile routine, several young lawyers spend many years of their lives preparing to different examinations simultaneously, on a full time basis.