Legal and judicial skills

During June 5-6 2018, Academy of Justice supported by the EU Twinning Project “Further Support to Legal Education Reform”, organized a training on “Legal and judicial skills”.

Purpose of this training was to extend knowledge of the professional and administrative staff of courts and prosecution of the Republic of Kosovo, about the legal and judicial skills.

First day of this training elaborated on the following: preliminary review of the indictment, assessing the indictment and ways of acting after this assessment, actions to avoid procedural obstacles from which the permissibility of the legal process depends, and the judicial steps in the preliminary hearing, second hearing and the court hearing.

Whereas the second day covered: the process and principles of a good legal writing, legal writing and reasoning according to IRAC method, structured questions, examples of judgments and practical cases, analytical process and its importance, analytical challenges, the written legal analysis, structure and content of the judgment reasoning, and instructions for writing and reasoning of judgments.

During this training, while elaborating the preliminary review of the indictment and actions that the court may take, focus was given to the following: procedural presumptions related to the court, general review about the competence, case competence, when and how a case judge shall assess the competence, territorial competence, procedural presumptions related to the parties, legal representative, temporary representative and regular representation of the legal entity.

It was also elaborated on some of the most important issues pertaining to the initial hearing, second hearing and the main hearing. In this light, the training elaborated on topics like the initial hearing, objection of evidence, request to dismiss the indictment, rulings of the single judge or of a panel of judges, publicity of the court hearing, carrying out the judicial hearing, prerequisites for conducting court hearing, postponing, terminating and timelines for completing a court hearing, minutes of the court hearing, and the flow of the court hearing, etc.

Beneficiaries of this training were professional associates and administrative staff in courts and prosecutions of Kosovo - from all instances.