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Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Party Central Committee has attached great importance to the cultivation of legal talents, and profoundly recognized the vital role of legal talents in advancing the rule of law in China and realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization, adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, clearly states the requirement to improve the practice-oriented education and training mechanism for law schools, which provides fundamental guidance and important direction for further promoting the reform of legal education. Improving the practice-oriented education and training mechanism for Juris Master students embodies the disciplinary characteristics of law and reflects the principles of JM education (Ministry of Justice of the People’s Republic of China, 2025). As the main body cultivating legal talents, law schools undertake the important mission of “educating people for the Party and cultivating talents for the country”. The Opinions issued by the Ministry of Education also stipulate that the training of professional degree postgraduates should highlight practice orientation and strengthen the organic integration of basic courses and industry practice courses. The training should widely adopt case teaching, professional internship, real-scenario simulation and other methods and focus on improving postgraduates’ ability to solve practical problems (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2023). Such a practice-oriented training requirement also points out the core direction for cultivating the research capacity of Juris Master students. The cultivation of research capacity for JM students must be practice-oriented, emphasizing the applied academic literacy and applied research capacity of learners (Qian & Li, 2025).

Against this background, the traditional teaching of “Civil Procedure Law” faces practical challenges, with deficiencies in the practicality of teaching content, innovation of teaching methods and diversity of assessment methods. As a result, students fail to fully synchronize theoretical learning with practical capacity development, leaving an obvious gap. Meanwhile, with increasingly complex social and economic activities, civil disputes are characterized by diverse subjects and novel case facts. The legal service market has raised higher requirements for graduates’ practical competence, especially expecting “plug-and-play” capability from high-level interdisciplinary applied talents such as Juris Master students. Therefore, deepening the curriculum reform of “Civil Procedure Law” and further deepening industry-education integration are urgent needs for universities to improve the practice-oriented education and training mechanism for Juris Master students, continuously cultivate high-quality legal talents, and provide strong legal talent support for Chinese modernization.

1 Significance of the Curriculum Reform of “Civil Procedure Law”

As one of the core compulsory courses for Juris Master students, “Civil Procedure Law” not only systematically shapes students’ cognitive framework of civil procedure systems, but also plays a crucial role in fostering students’ concept of social fairness and justice and thinking on procedural rules (Zhu, 2024). In terms of curriculum structure, the course mainly consists of two modules: basic theories and procedural practice. The part of basic theory focuses on basic principles, core institutions and fundamental theories with distinct theoretical attributes. The part of procedural practice centers on the operational procedures of litigation at all judicial levels, with prominent practical features.

To implement reform on the “Civil Procedure Law” based on practical development needs is essentially an overall optimization project that focuses on curriculum quality and strengthens educational effectiveness. Its core goal is to fully optimize the curriculum teaching system through in-depth collaboration between universities and legal practice sectors, prioritize improving students’ ability to handle legal practice and apply procedural rules, and cultivate students’ critical legal thinking and innovative literacy in legal practice. From the perspective of actual educational effects, this curriculum reform can further improve the practice capacity-centered training model for the Juris Master program. By introducing real cases and standardized workflows provided by judicial branches and law firms, practical teaching is no longer subordinate to theoretical teaching, but becomes the core content running through all links and stages of curriculum teaching, truly realizing the simultaneous implementation and synergistic enhancement of theoretical knowledge instruction and practical capacity cultivation.

In the meantime, the reform promotes the deep integration of legal theoretical education and practical skill training. Through various teaching forms such as dual-tutor collaborative teaching, mock trial exercises and legal clinic practice, students can complete practical training, including legal document drafting and court procedure simulation under the professional guidance of practical tutors on the basis of mastering core theories such as the jurisdiction system and evidence rules, thus achieving a smooth transition from understanding legal provisions to internalizing professional skills in the learning process. In addition, the reform helps improve the long-term mechanism of collaborative education between universities and legal practice institutions. By recruiting judges with rich trial experience and lawyers with outstanding professional competence as off-campus tutors, and arranging students to participate in case assistance and on-the-job internships in cooperative institutions, the shortage of frontline practical experience among on-campus teachers is effectively remedied, providing a clear and feasible training path for Juris Master students to enhance professional adaptability and meet the competency standards of legal positions.

In short, the industry-education integration reform of the “Civil Procedure Law” is not only about improving the quality of a single course, but also exploring a replicable and promotable construction model for practice-oriented legal courses, which provides solid curriculum support for cultivating high-quality legal talents with both moral integrity and professional competence.

2 Existing Problems in the Current “Civil Procedure Law” Course

Against the background of comprehensively advancing law-based governance and deepening the reform of Juris Master education, the current teaching model of “Civil Procedure Law” in universities still faces challenges in meeting the needs of cultivating high-quality applied legal talents. Through systematic analysis, the current curriculum teaching has three major problems that need to be urgently improved.

2.1 Insufficient Integration between Theory and Practice

The connection between theoretical instruction and practical application in the current curriculum needs to be strengthened. Teaching is still dominated by one-way lecturing by teachers, and such a stylized model results in students’ weak capacity to systematically solve complex legal problems. Although case analysis and other supporting exercises are included in the courseware, they only represent formal adjustments without substantial reform of teaching methods. Students’ specific practical skills, including legal document drafting, evidence examination, court debate, legal research and fact investigation, have not been systematically trained. The cultivation of practical capacity tends to be “generalized” without forming decomposable and assessable practical evaluation indicators. The systematicness of practical teaching links needs to be enhanced, and the connection between practical capacity and theoretical courses is weak, leading to obstacles for students in transforming theoretical knowledge into operational capacity.

2.2 Limitations Existing in the Development Dimension of Industry-Education Integration

At present, cooperation between universities and practice sectors is mostly at the exploratory stage, and the depth and breadth of cooperation need to be expanded. Although some universities have implemented the “dual-tutor system” combining on-campus and off-campus tutors, in practice, on-campus tutors generally lack practical experience, and the guidance of off-campus tutors is often formalistic. In addition, the imperfect assessment and evaluation system for off-campus tutors makes students overly reliant on the academic training mode in curriculum learning, thesis topic selection and research design, resulting in insufficient applied capacity.

Furthermore, students rarely have the opportunity to participate in real case handling as judge assistants or lawyer assistants, making it difficult to experience the full litigation procedure in a real workplace environment. Moreover, universities and local institutions sometimes differ in interest demands and cooperation models, making it hard to establish long-term and stable cooperative relations. To some extent, this situation hinders students’ in-depth understanding of the operational mechanism of legal practice and restricts the further improvement of practical teaching quality and efficiency.

2.3 The Evaluation Mechanism Needs to be Strengthened in Practice Orientation

The current curriculum assessment and evaluation method is inadequate in comprehensively measuring students’ comprehensive quality. As a compulsory course for Juris Master students, “Civil Procedure Law” is mostly assessed by closed-book examinations in universities, with the evaluation core being “judging performance by exams and capacity by scores”. Although this method can effectively evaluate students’ knowledge, memory and comprehension, it has limitations in measuring their legal practical skills. Students’ core practical skills, such as legal document drafting, evidence analysis and court debate, as well as legal professional ethics, can hardly be comprehensively and objectively tested through traditional written examinations. Such a theory-focused evaluation orientation, to some extent, weakens students’ enthusiasm for practical training and is not conducive to teachers fully grasping the development of students’ comprehensive capacity. In the long run, it cannot meet the demand for legal professionals in the construction of a socialist country under the rule of law. Therefore, establishing a more diversified and scientific assessment and evaluation system has become an important task to improve the quality of legal talent cultivation.

3 Exploration of Curriculum Reform under the Industry-Education Integration Model — Taking Inner Mongolia G University as an Example

In response to the above problems in curriculum teaching, the Juris Master of Inner Mongolia G University has implemented a series of systematic reforms with in-depth industry-education integration as a breakthrough, forming a curriculum construction model with promotional value.

3.1 Innovating Teaching Model to Strengthen Practical Capacity Cultivation

To address the poor connection between legal theoretical teaching and legal practice application, the curriculum team has actively explored and adopted diversified teaching methods to comprehensively strengthen students’ practical application capacity. In terms of teaching methods, real judicial cases from cooperative courts and law firms are adopted to build a full-process case teaching model. Teaching is conducted following the steps of chapter introduction, theoretical explanation, group discussion and practical comment, enabling students to understand the application logic and judicial considerations of civil procedure jurisdiction, evidence rules, court trial procedures and other contents in a complete case context, thus promoting the organic integration of theoretical knowledge and judicial practice. A problem-based learning (PBL) model is introduced, taking real legal scenarios and practical issues as the starting point to stimulate students’ willingness to think independently and practice hands-on. It helps students integrate substantive law and procedural law in solving specific problems. In practical teaching links such as mock trials, the curriculum focuses on cultivating students’ perspectives of both judges and lawyers. By taking turns to act as judges, lawyers, parties and other roles, students fully understand the litigation status, rights and obligations of all parties, and effectively improve professional skills, including evidence analysis, court debate and legal document drafting. In addition, the curriculum emphasizes improving students’ legal information literacy. With the help of various online resources, students are guided to proficiently use official platforms such as China Judgments Online, Enforcement Information Disclosure Platform and professional legal databases to conduct case retrieval, dispute focus sorting and case factual finding on a regular basis, so as to adapt to the digital and intelligent development of the legal industry.

3.2 Establishing a Collaborative Mechanism to Promote In-Depth Industry-Education Integration

To solve the problems of superficial and fragmented industry-education integration, Inner Mongolia G University has built a tripartite collaborative education system of “University-Court-Law Firm”, promoting the transformation of industry-education integration toward in-depth and standardized development. In the implementation process, the university has established a long-term and stable collaborative education mechanism with cooperative courts and law firms. The operational system of industry-education integration shall be refined to clarify the selection criteria, job responsibilities and collaboration rules of on-campus academic tutors and off-campus practical tutors. By standardizing the selection, assessment and incentive mechanisms of tutors and building a regular communication platform for on-campus and off-campus tutors, the efficient operation of dual-tutor collaborative guidance is ensured. The advantages of university theoretical teaching and practical sector experience are fully integrated to realize resource complementation and collaborative education. In practical teaching links, the university has established a regular curriculum internship system. Students regularly go to cooperative courts to participate in court observation, file sorting, pre-trial mediation and other work. Students can also choose to enter cooperative law firms to assist in basic practical work such as legal research, client communication and document drafting. The immersive internship mode allows students to receive systematic and full-process practical training in a real professional environment, effectively narrowing the gap between theoretical cognition and practical operation. University-local institution collaboration also extends to curriculum development. The university and practice sectors jointly build a case resource library, and standardize and modularize the handling procedures of typical civil disputes. On this basis, the whole-process guidance of graduation internship is optimized. The university has formulated a standardized internship guidance plan and clarified the phased guidance responsibilities of on-campus and off-campus tutors, so as to strengthen dynamic supervision and phased assessment of the internship process (Pan & Tang, 2026).

3.3 Improving the Diversified Evaluation System to Optimize the Assessment Mechanism

To give play to the guiding role of the evaluation system in practical capacity cultivation, the curriculum has constructed a scientific and diversified evaluation system. On the one hand, an assessment method combining process evaluation and summative evaluation is implemented, with a significant increase in the proportion of process assessment. The performances such as classroom discussions, case analyses, practical assignments and mock trials are included in the assessment scope to comprehensively reflect students’ daily learning input and phased learning outcomes, guiding students to shift from final exam cramming to daily capacity accumulation. On the other hand, a multi-stakeholder joint evaluation model is adopted, inviting practical experts such as judges and lawyers to participate in the assessment of students’ practical capacity, and introducing industry evaluation standards in practical links such as mock trials and legal document drafting. Simultaneously, assessment forms are innovated, and open assessment methods such as open-book examination, special research reports and real project design are widely used, weakening the assessment of pure knowledge memory and focusing on evaluating students’ comprehensive application capacities including legal research, evidence analysis, logical argumentation and solution construction in complex legal scenarios, realizing the transformation of assessment from “knowledge memory-oriented” to “capacity application-oriented”.

4 Effects of the “Civil Procedure Law” Curriculum Reform

Verified through a full-cycle teaching practice, the “Civil Procedure Law” curriculum reform carried out by Inner Mongolia G University based on the industry-education integration model has achieved remarkable effects, mainly reflected in three aspects.

4.1 Remarkable Effects of Teaching Model Innovation and Significant Improvement of Students’ Comprehensive Capacity

The diversified teaching model of “case-guided, virtual-real integrated learning” implemented in the curriculum has achieved obvious effects. The organic combination of problem-based learning and real case teaching has transformed the classroom from one-way lecturing by teachers to interactive discussions between teachers and students and among students, significantly mobilizing students’ learning initiative. In the complete case teaching process of chapter introduction, theoretical explanation, group discussion and practical comment, students not only firmly master the basic principles and institutional requirements of “Civil Procedure Law”, but also truly understand the specific application of procedural rules in dispute resolution through role-playing and scenario simulation. The classroom has thus transformed from a knowledge transmission place to a capacity training platform, and students’ classroom participation, enthusiasm and practical exploration awareness have been significantly enhanced. After the reform, students can proficiently use official platforms such as China Judgments Online to conduct case comparison and retrieval, and timely grasp the trend of judicial policies with the help of professional databases, with simultaneous improvement of legal information literacy and digital legal tool application capacity. In terms of practical operation, students’ procedural application capacity and legal reasoning capacity have been steadily improved, and evidence examination and factual finding capacity have been significantly enhanced through systematic training such as mock trials, legal document drafting, evidence sorting and court debate. When facing difficult, complex and new-type civil cases, students can comprehensively apply relevant knowledge of substantive and procedural laws to demonstrate good logical thinking, legal application and litigation scheme design capacities. These capacity improvements are not only reflected in curriculum assessment results but also lay a solid foundation for students to enter the legal industry and efficiently handle practical problems in the future.

4.2 In-Depth Transformation of Industry-Education Integration Mechanism and Increasingly Perfect Practical Teaching System

Relying on the tripartite collaborative education mechanism of university, court and law firm, this curriculum has truly realized the transformation of industry-education integration from superficiality to substantiality. For one thing, practical tutors have shifted from phased participation to full in-depth involvement, forming a complementary teaching team with on-campus teachers, who are jointly responsible for the teaching and guidance of practice-related content. Through regular collective lesson preparation and joint development of practical teaching projects, the two sides integrate new problems and difficulties in judicial practice into teaching content, allowing students to contact legal scenarios closer to the frontline. The jointly built case resource library also provides systematic and operable learning guidance for students. For another thing, students can deeply participate in real legal affairs and fully engage in practical links such as court observation, file sorting and pre-litigation mediation, making the practical teaching chain more complete. In the practice process, students gradually become familiar with the full litigation procedure from case acceptance, evidence exchange, to court trial and debate. Students master the key methods of standardized legal document drafting and evidence logic construction through reading and sorting real case files, with significantly improved capacity to independently handle simple civil cases. At the same time, the real professional environment has effectively cultivated students’ professional ethics and team spirit. It further enhances the standardization and effectiveness of practical teaching and forms a long-term, stable and sustainable collaborative education pattern.

4.3 Clear Orientation of Evaluation System Reform and Fruitful Teaching and Research Achievements

The curriculum has optimized the “process-oriented, diversified” comprehensive assessment system, giving full play to its education-guiding function. By increasing the proportion of process assessment and building a multi-dimensional evaluation framework covering classroom participation, case analysis, practical assignments, mock trials and other links, the evaluation content has become more comprehensive and systematic. Practical experts participate in assessment and evaluation, providing accurate comments on students’ capacities such as document drafting, debate strategies and evidence application from the perspective of legal practice. Practical experts combine the organic integration of academic standards and industry requirements to guide students to focus on capacity improvement rather than pure knowledge memory. In aspects of evaluation mechanism innovation, students are helped to identify their own strengths and weaknesses by comparing their performance in different practical links. Simultaneously, the function of assessment results feeding back to teaching is strengthened. The teaching team dynamically adjusts teaching priorities based on assessment results. As well, the curriculum reform has spawned a number of high-quality teaching and research achievements. Relevant experience has been promoted and referenced by law schools and departments in the region. Practice proves that students’ legal thinking, practical operation, professional literacy, innovation awareness and complex dispute resolution capacity have been comprehensively improved, fully reflecting the supporting role of evaluation reform in achieving talent training goals.

5 Conclusion

The exploration and practice of “Civil Procedure Law” curriculum reform show that deepening industry-education integration and promoting the integration of industry and education are effective paths to cultivate high-quality applied legal talents. This reform has formed a systematic, practical capacity training path: classroom case introduction, dual-tutor joint instruction, mock trial exercise, on-the-job internship, and practical operation. Relying on the innovative reform of teaching modes and assessment systems through the construction of the “University-Court-Law Firm” collaborative education mechanism, the university has effectively resolved the long-standing disconnect between theoretical instruction and practical training. The university has achieved notable improvements in students’ practical capabilities and comprehensive professionalism. Looking ahead, law schools should continue to deepen strategic cooperation with practice sectors and expand cooperation fields. Law schools improve cooperation mechanisms and continuously integrate the latest experience and requirements of judicial practice into the whole process of talent cultivation. The university shall boost the in-depth integration of modern information technology into teaching activities and explore innovative forms of smart education. Such endeavors will steadily upgrade the quality and efficiency of legal talent cultivation. Only by adhering to the training concept of equal emphasis on theory and practice, integration of academia and profession can we continuously supply outstanding legal talents who master both theory and practice for the construction of a rule of law China.

References

[1] Ministry of Justice of the People’s Republic of China. (2025). Improve the practice-oriented legal education and training mechanism by focusing on the “Six Promotions”. Legal Information Network of the Chinese Government. Retrieved March 23, 2026, from https://www.moj.gov.cn/pub/sfbgw/zwgkztzl/xxxcgcxjpfzsx/fzsxllqy/202501/t20250108_512585.html.

[2] Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. (2023). Opinions on further promoting the classified development of postgraduate education for academic degrees and professional degrees. Retrieved March 23, 2026, from http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/202312/content_6922068.htm.

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[5] Pan, F., & Tang, C. (2026). Problems and countermeasures of practical teaching mode for juris masters under the background of industry-education integration. Theoretical Research and Practice of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 9(2), 1-8.