226 Legal Training Modernized: Towards a Legal Profession As in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the need for civil servants became a decisive factor behind the changes in legal education in nineteenth-century Finland. When Finland was detached from Sweden and annexed to Russia as an autonomous Grand-Duchy in 1809, it retained its Swedish constitutions and laws.^2 xhe absolutist czar ruled Finland directly, by-passing the Russian ministries and the duma.^^ As a result of Finland’s autonomous position, central administrative agencies needed to be organized in the Grand Duchy, and the newbureaucracy was built essentially around men with a legal education.!'^ The part of the nobility that had traditionally made its career in the army now shifted to careers in public office; this development changed the character of the nobility completely. According to Konttinen, the Finnish nobility effectively entrenched itself in the administrative bureaucracy, thereafter blocking access to public office to other classes.This social closure was effected by requiring university degrees for government office. According to the Decree of 1817, a cameral or judicial examination was necessary for most government positions.*^ It was only from the middle of the century that the majority of the hundred court judges in the countryside began to be educated in the law.^^ One of the social structures to replace the old Ständestaat was the professions, one of which was the legal profession. Instead of identifying themselves first and foremost with their estate — mostly the nobility -, legal professionals came to feel increasingly part of the same social group as their professional collegues.*^ The professionalization was caused not only by the need to replace the social structures of the Ständestaat with new ones but by the need of the emerging modern state to organize itself with the help of modern legislation and the subsequent need of modern legal science as well. Thus from the 1850s onwards, legal science flourished. This was reflected not only in legal science, as the number of treatises multiplied in a few years,but also in legal education. The university statutes were The czar did not, however, specify what “constitutions” he referred to. Jussila 1969 pp. 18-22. Tyynilä 1991 p. 136. ’■* Konttinen 1991 p. 111. '5 Ibid. pp. 105-106, 116-118. The cameral examination was needed for posts in the financial administration of the Grand Duchy, whereas the judicial examination qualified for the judiciary. Tarvainen 1991 pp. 26; Klinge - Knapas - Leikola — Strömberg 1989 p. 337. ‘7 Mäntylä 1995 pp. 49-50. The professionalization got its institutional framework when Finland’s Legal Association (Juridiska Föreningen i Finland) was founded in 1862; Konttinen 1991 p. 223. During the first half of the centurv, there had been difficulties in filling the vacant posts in the legal faculty of the University; most law students aimed at the judicial examination only. Since the 1850s the number of law students increased tremendously; consequently, many more doctoral
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