Teaching, research, and the work of building legal education programmes have been a common thread throughout Nick Dimitrievski’s years at Karlstad University. His pedagogical contributions are now being recognised through the distinction of Excellent Teacher in Law.
Nick Dimitrievski, what does being named an Excellent Teacher in Law mean to you?
– It is both gratifying and honouring, and I see it as recognition of long-term work in which teaching, research, and the development of legal education have been closely interconnected. Teaching is not an activity that exists alongside research; it is a central part of the academic mission. For me, it has been about combining subject expertise, pedagogical reflection, and a strong conviction that legal education should do more than simply convey knowledge of the law as it currently stands.
You have helped build several legal education programmes. What has that work taught you?
– More than I probably understood when it began. Designing, staffing, and quality-assuring a law programme involves much more than educational development. It also means working within a highly regulated environment. You need to understand regulatory requirements and institutional frameworks, translate them into day-to-day operations, and be able to explain and justify decisions to external reviewers. These are experiences that have later influenced the direction of parts of my research as well.
You describe your work with the law programme as giving you experience of legal and regulatory issues. How has that influenced you as a researcher and teacher?
– I have become increasingly interested in what happens at the intersection of law, markets, and public governance. Regulations shape the room for manoeuvre available to companies and organisations, affect how markets function, and determine which strategic choices are actually possible. In this context, legal analysis becomes a way of understanding both the rules themselves and the reality they create for those who must operate within a legal framework.
– Whether the audience is a student, a fellow researcher, a public authority, or someone seeking to understand how a regulatory framework affects an organisation, it is essential to move from complexity to structure without losing precision along the way. This is also where research and teaching share common ground: understanding complex legal and institutional conditions and being able to explain their significance for businesses, civil society organisations, markets, and people who make decisions, or who will become future decision-makers.
If you were to summarise your teaching philosophy, what characterises your approach to teaching?
– I usually describe my pedagogy as critically inspired. Students must, of course, develop a solid understanding of legal rules and principles, particularly in my field of tax law. They first need to understand how the legal system is structured and how to apply legal rules. But for me, that is not enough. Students must also learn to ask why laws look the way they do, what values and socio-economic assumptions they are based on, and what consequences different legal solutions may have. Our tax system is a particularly clear example, since tax rules ultimately concern how resources are distributed and which behaviours and activities society chooses to encourage or burden.
– This dual movement, using different pedagogical tools to combine descriptive and normative teaching, probably best summarises my view of legal education. It is through this dual approach that legal education can convey something beyond mere knowledge of the law as it stands.
What does this distinction mean for the students at the School of Business and for the subject of law?
– It is an important recognition for the discipline. In a remarkably short period of time, we have succeeded in building a comprehensive legal education environment at the School of Business, and this distinction is yet another acknowledgement of the quality of that work. However, an award like this is not an endpoint. The interesting question is what we do with it. For my part, it brings a responsibility to continue developing teaching and contributing to the discussion of what a modern legal education should provide for students.
