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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
The celebration of 180 years of legal education in Brazil, held in August 2007, was marked by strong criticism of the Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (Brazilian Bar Association) and the higher education expansion policy which was undertaken in the late 1990s, establishing more than a thousand law schools in the country. The escolas de enganação (schools of illusion), created mainly during the last decade, would have increased the numbers in the professional college, which currently has around 600,000 lawyers, to approximately two and a half million, if it were not for the professional filter of the Bar Exam. In other words, the proliferation of mass legal courses in Brazil would have enabled the emergence of educational merchants, specializing in the sale of an illusion of social elevation and professional success, which, thanks to the control of entry into the professional corporation, did not happen.
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