Mexican attorneys, law professors and students will gain training and experience to practice effectively amid changes in Mexico’s constitution and criminal justice system

Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Chicago-Kent and Technológico de Monterrey (Tec), one of Mexico’s leading private universities, have established a special program to provide training in criminal procedure, curriculum development, criminal law and trial advocacy to Mexican judges, practicing attorneys, law professors and students. The program is designed to help Mexico’s legal community practice more effectively amid dramatic changes to the country’s criminal justice system.

Chicago-Kent and Tec de Monterrey’s law school, which is located in Mexico City, will jointly produce a comprehensive program to prepare law students, defense counsel, prosecutors and judges for practice in this new legal environment. Funding for the three-year program is provided by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development and the Higher Education for Development Office.

In an effort to fight corruption and instill public confidence in Mexico’s legal system, sweeping changes have been implemented to make criminal proceedings more transparent. An adversarial oral system will replace the closed, rigid Mexican legal bureaucracy which relied heavily on an inquisitorial written structure.

Under the new system, protections for rights of the accused in criminal cases have been adapted from the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. A national public defender system has been mandated by law. Suspects will be able to face their accusers and are presumed innocent until proven guilty at trial. Law enforcement officials must now devote more time to creating a credible chain of evidence in cases. Attorneys who defend and prosecute criminal cases will require extensive knowledge of mediation, plea agreements, forensic evidence and oral presentation. Judges will be trained in judicial decision making. Mexican authorities hope to have the new system in place within the next eight years.

The program conducted by Chicago-Kent and Tec de Monterrey will offer lawyers in Baja California, Morelos, and Nuevo León a series of courses spanning six months that feature training in oral advocacy skills and reformed criminal procedure, with lawyers who complete the series receiving a legal education certificate. A “train-the-trainers” program in substantive and procedural law and in pedagogical techniques will enable Mexican law professors to teach the advocacy curriculum and legal education certificate program. Approximately 50 people have attended the first sessions.

In the final stage of the program, a criminal law clinic will be established at Tec de Monterrey to give law students a comprehensive and balanced professional education that will prepare them adequately for criminal law practice. Students will receive hands-on training as they work with experienced criminal attorneys on actual cases and learn advocacy techniques and principles of court administration.

A scholarship program will be established to provide 15 Mexican attorneys with funding to attend the legal education certificate courses. Scholarships to attend a one-year Master of Laws degree program at Chicago-Kent in international law with an emphasis on criminal litigation will also be awarded to four Tec de Monterrey law school graduates. Two Tec students already have been accepted into the program and will begin classes at Chicago-Kent in the fall of 2009.

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