On March 14, 2024, the USAID Rule of Law Program (Program) facilitated a working meeting between approximately 35 individuals representing the National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement (NCEQE) and various Georgian law schools to discuss benchmarks that define baseline requirements for law school degree programs and a set of guidelines created to assist in their implementation.

NCEQE adopted the “Law Benchmarks” in 2020 to define the minimum competencies law school graduates should possess.  However, experience revealed that university representatives and accreditation experts did not have a uniform understanding of what some of the benchmarks meant, creating dissatisfaction with the accreditation experts and the procedure.

In an effort to clarify terms used in the Benchmarks and to assist in their more uniform application, the Program sponsored local expert Levan Mosakhlishvili to draft a document entitled, “Law Benchmark Guidelines.”

During the March 14 meeting, the stakeholders discussed both the Guidelines and the need to update the Law Benchmarks itself.  

NCEQE’s acting director, Lasha Margishvili noted that 2026 is a year for accreditation of all law programs and expressed readiness and openness to engage in further discussion on possible revision of the Law Benchmark and improvement of the accreditation process.