Message from the Dean

The Faculty of Law at Özyeğin University was founded in 2011. In line with the vision and mission it has embraced since the day it was founded, the Faculty of Law aims to prepare graduates who can make a difference in the public and private sectors both at home and around the world. The Faculty endeavors to disseminate the knowledge it creates to its stakeholders through its experienced and distinguished faculty, and high-caliber staff, each an expert in their respective fields. To that end, our distinctive faculty not only transfer knowledge to their prospective young colleagues but also make sure that they learn how and where to use this knowledge in the real world starting from their university years by putting it into use personally, in particular through applied courses.

In this age and time, lifelong learning has become a motto. In light of this motto, as the Faculty of Law at Özyeğin University, our top priorities are to ensure that our prospective young colleagues complete their legal internships while still at university, fulfill their certification requirements through certificate programs on a broad array of subjects including current issues to which both practitioners and theorists make significant contributions. Furthermore, we expect our students to attend law clinics that offer real-world experiences in courthouses, participate in competitions that contribute to the education of competent jurists, be involved in seminars that allow them to express themselves in front of others and develop their presentation skills. In terms of legal reasoning, we encourage our students to attend law readings in which they are asked to understand and make sense of national and international problems and developments, discuss the legal contributions they can offer tothese problems, and offer solutions with the support of their peers.

We attach great importance to vesting our students, whom we consider our prospective young colleagues, with the technical correspondence skills that all qualified jurists are expected to possess. We believe that these skills will enable them to excel in performing the responsibilities they will assume upon graduation. To that end, we strive to equip them with the much-needed negotiation and communication skills in the field of law.

We aspire to prepare our students as true jurists with a highly developed sense of right and justice. As such, we expect them to be involved in not just national but also international matters. As one of our key priorities remains to be making sure that all our students take part in solution-oriented national and international projects, we want our students to acquire project writing skills while still studying at university. To that end, we endeavor to provide the necessary guidance to them through our courses. In other words, we expect them to put forward legal initiatives that will offer solutions to existing issues around the world, and in particular in our country, through the projects they will prepare with our faculty members. Within this framework, we place a special emphasis on social responsibility projects, in particular. We believe that the outcomes they will achieve by being personally involved in bringing social responsibility projects to life, and by actively participating in the process will make significant social contributions. And with the passive learning model now abandoned, we know that the education process has turned into a student-centered model in which the student participates in the practice and learns through hands-on experience. In this context, mock cases make it possible for our prospective young colleagues to learn and apply the judicial processes, subjects, and duties while still at university. Meanwhile, our applied courses enable students to acquire the much-needed communication skills in judicial processes, and facilitate students to learn about the speaking methods and negotiation procedures that need to be employed, especially when working with vulnerable groups such as victims, defendants, juvenile delinquents, and women who are victims of violence.

Our young prospective colleagues learn how to look at problems from a broader and interdisciplinary perspective, think in-depth and analyze, and express their feelings and opinions in front of others. By acquiring these skills, they forge ahead towards their goals more equipped than ever.

As the Faculty of Law at Özyeğin University, we remain sensitive to social issues, and disseminate the knowledge we create through our national and international scientific events, the resulting outputs of these events, and our faculty’s top-quality, sought-after, and highly-cited papers.

Despite being a young university, we must proudly express that the world-class education our graduates receive and the entrepreneurial spirit imbued in them throughout their studies render them capable of working as free licensers as well as sought-after legal professionals in both public and private sectors.

The English-medium electives we offer in addition to Turkish-medium courses are a testimony of the special emphasis we place on making sure that our students always remain cognizant of and in constant touch with the rest of the world.  On the other hand, through our rich selection of non-law electives, we expect our students to take a multidisciplinary approach to matters and assess different areas with their legal professional identities. By vesting them with such a wide perspective, we endeavor to prepare them as true visionary legal professionals who are capable of making contributions to defining lex ferenda, what the law should be, and the law in the service of people.

With our robust faculty who wholeheartedly believe in justice, are dedicated to fighting for rights, and forge ahead with an unwavering commitment to making the lex ferenda materializeand with our indispensable administrative staff, we invite our prospective young colleagues to join us on our path to fulfill the vision and mission of Özyeğin University and share our ideals with the society.

Let us join you as you set off on your journey to achieve the ideal of making the lex ferenda materialize and to secure justice, which is as crucial and fundamental as water and air, and with this very first step, let us be there for you as you accumulate what you need to possess in order to reach your goals.