Under the auspices of Lúcia Lobato, Coordinator of the Working Group for Justice Sector Reform of the Prime Minister’s Office, a Cooperation Agreement was signed on September 29 in Lisbon between the Faculty of Law of Universidade Nacional de Timor Lorosa’e (UNTL) and the Faculty of Law of the Universidade de Lisboa (FDUL).
At the signing ceremony, the UNTL Faculty of Law was represented by its Dean, José Tomás Alves, and the FDUL by its Director, Eduardo Vera-Cruz Pinto. The agreement was also signed by the Rector of UNTL, João Soares Martins, and the President of the FDUL Institute for Legal Cooperation, Fernando Loureiro Bastos. 
This important document lays the foundations for fostering and strengthening collaboration between the two higher education institutions in the area of law, providing, among other initiatives, for the exchange of teachers and researchers, the production of textbooks on Timorese law, and the joint organization of classes, conferences, seminars, and master’s and doctoral courses, both in person and online.
It is hoped that other similar agreements will soon be signed with more Portuguese Law faculties. 
In order to comply with the Government Program, and in response to the shortcomings identified in the report “Towards a Better Justice System” — namely the shortage of human resources and the serious difficulties and gaps in legal education in Timor-Leste — two simultaneous and complementary lines of action have been pursued, both to be completed within the term of this legislature, i.e., five years:
1. Sending law students to Portuguese universities;
2. Strengthening the capacity of the UNTL Law Faculty, in order to ensure high-quality higher education in law in the country in the near future.
The contribution of current scholarship holders studying abroad will also be essential to achieving the goal of addressing the shortage of qualified human resources in the justice sector and in legal education in the medium and long term, thereby ensuring the sustainability and optimization of available resources.
