Career Paths into Legal Academia in Italy

The contribution aims to explain the relevant steps in the Italian academic career path and its most relevant traits. It is divided in three parts. The first contains a brief outline of the Italian legal framework on university recruitment and its evolution over the last forty years. The various structures are presented in a synthesised and simplified way, with the purpose of indicating the rationales underlying the different reforms. After having sketched out the playing field, the article describes a typical Italian academic career and points out the unique aspects of each step on the long path of academia, from university graduation to the call as full professor. Finally, the paper outlines fundamental features of the Italian academic social environment, which are essential to understand how the rules on university recruitment actually work in practice. Needless to say, the last part is the most important one. In addressing the subject matter, it is not possible to limit the treatment to a description of the rules and their rationales as there are several non-written rules belonging to the Italian academic tradition that need to be presented in order to understand university recruitment in actual practice.