A comparison between Hungarian and Anglo-American approaches to ethical legal training at different stages of the educational continuum

The main aim of the research was to investigate legal ethics education in Hungary for the first time. Ethicists refer to the importance of the local cultural context and in Hungary, similar to other countries in the region, Communism and the transition to a market economy destabilised traditional ethics and has led to a society suffering low morale. Consequently, there is a need for ethics education in Hungary, including professional ethics. The academic literature identifies possible aims of professional ethics education, and many researchers recommend an integrated approach, continuing after qualification, to achieve these aims. This thesis reviewed the current legal ethics education practices in the most common tertiary, formal learning routes leading to become qualified lawyer, and also in the post-qualification stages in the USA, in England and Wales, and in Hungary, and contrasted them in a novel way, by using Rest's Four Component Model. Since the USA and England and Wales have extensive and complex systems in the field, a partial review of the academic and professional standards and the academic literature on legal ethics education practices was conducted for reasons of practicality. Concerning Hungary, legal ethics was not a compulsory required course at law schools until the accreditation standards changed in 2016, and very few academic sources were found with regard to the topic. In order to fill a gap in the literature, information only available in Hungarian on government, academic and professional websites was translated and analysed, along with data gathered by qualitative 'elite' interviews with representatives of the major stakeholders in Hungarian legal ethics education: policymakers, academia and the legal professions. This research found no tradition of, and no discourse about legal ethics education in Hungary, but a variety of solutions both at the pre-qualification and the post-qualification stages.