Legal Education in Brazilian Public Schools and Its Impact on Social and Humanistic Training of Future Professionals

Our contribution focuses on the current situation of the use of teaching and learning techniques in law courses in public schools of Brazil. To analyze the formation of future jurists, there will be reference to the federal rules on the university education and various educational projects. Also will be introduced data resulting from empirical research about the main teaching/learning techniques used by law professors and the students' opinion about the methods that most favor the internalisation of general and dogmatic contents. A table with data about the educational projects of public law courses informs about its effective concern for humanistic and social training of the students in order to encourage them to practice democratic and participatory values. Questioning the process of "the learning of learning" (J.-R. Capella), it will be discussed what is the degree of social engagement that characterizes the profile of legal professionals formed by the public law schools in the Latin American socio-economic context. There are good reasons to employ more frequently certain innovative educational techniques as the "teaching with research" and "teaching with social projects" (M. T. Masetto), which value social experiences and emancipatory practices, connecting better legal concepts to the peripheral social reality of our country.