Law as Part of Managerial Skills. Reform Proposals for Teaching Law to Business Administration and Economics Students

Law is firmly established as an integral and independent component of most business and economics degree courses. The objective of this article is to examine the contents and teaching methods generally employed in the law courses required for degrees in business and economics. As a rule both the contents and the teaching methods are adopted from degree courses for law students. However, to date there has been little discussion as to whether teaching procedures that have been developed for law students are also suitable for business and economics students. The article shows what problems can arise if course contents and teaching methods are adopted without reflection and without adapting them to the needs of the target group. This overview is then taken as a basis for a proposal as to how the content of law courses can be taught in a practice-oriented way, adapting and further developing the curricula that have proved suitable for law students to the needs of students of business and economics. The use of presentations of the legal life cycle of business organisations and discussions of management case studies on legal problems as didactic models are introduced and practical teaching issues are discussed. The aim is to raise students' awareness of the legal problems that are important in running a company and to teach them skills that they can later use to deal with problems in their daily work