This article explores the challenges and potential solutions for reforming public legal education in Albania as part of the broader judicial reform agenda. While legal education has been identified as a vital tool for fostering civic engagement and restoring public trust in justice institutions, Albania’s efforts have been fragmented and largely ineffective. The 2019–2023 National Strategy for Public Legal Education (SELP) outlined key objectives, such as improving institutional cooperation and increasing public legal awareness, but implementation has been weak due to unclear institutional responsibilities, lack of measurable impact indicators, and resource constraints.
The authors argue for the adoption of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches—combining insights from law, education, social sciences, and communication—to make legal education more accessible, culturally relevant, and sustainable. Interdisciplinary collaboration can help overcome public disengagement by simplifying legal language, while transdisciplinary methods enable legal education to reflect real-life societal issues such as inequality, civic participation, and social justice.
Political instability, media misrepresentation, academic resistance, and weak regulatory support have all contributed to the stagnation of legal education reform. To overcome these issues, the authors call for a well-structured, inclusive, and adequately resourced national framework for legal education that promotes long-term civic empowerment. Such a reform must bridge theory and practice and foster meaningful stakeholder collaboration to build a more informed, legally aware, and democratic society in Albania.
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