Legal Education in India Past Present & Future M.R.K. Prasad V.M. Salgaocar College of Law, Goa India

Legal Education in India Past Present & Future

M.R.K. PrasadV.M. Salgaocar College of

Law,Goa India

500 law colleges

40,000 law students passing every year

10,00,000 lawyers registered

India has the second largest number of lawyers in the world,

second only to the United States. (2001 statistics)

Overview

Legal education in India offered through

Universities Government Law Colleges Private aided Law Colleges Private Law Colleges National Law Schools Corporate Law Schools

Legal Education in India

Clinical Legal Education in India has its roots in

both the legal aid and legal education reform

movements, as part of an effort to improve the

quality of law practice and to increase

awareness of lawyers’ professional and public

responsibility.

the modern Indian legal profession dates from British rule with the establishment of law courts in Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta in the 1726.

First time the qualifications to practice law was declared by The Bengal regulation XXVII of 1814 and the Legal Practitioners Act, 1846.

Formal legal education started in 1855, when the first professorship of law was introduced in Government Ephistone College.

Pre Independence

Earliest effort to reform legal education was in1885, Justice Muthuswami Iyer stressed the need for a formal college setup to impart legal education on a scientific basis.

The First Indian University Commission recommended in 1902 that a Bachelors degree either in science or art be required as a qualification to join the LL.B degree course.

It also recommended the use of tutorial and case methods to teach law.

Efforts to Reform Legal Education

In 1910, the Chagla Committee

concluded that law student should

spend at least 6 years in legal education

to become a lawyer.

It also advocated for pre legal

education, with the idea that only those

who passed a pre-law exam would be

admitted to the LL.B. course.

Efforts to Reform Legal Education

the Bombay Legal Education Committee 1949 “studying law as a science of law creates better lawyers and better judges.”

“an overemphasis on practical training—as opposed to scholarly and analytical legal training—would cause more harm to society.

Practical courses should be made compulsory only for students who choose to enter the profession of law.

Post independece

the 14th Report of the Law Commission of

India 1958 recognize the importance of

professional training and for a balance of both

academic and vocational training.

University training be followed by a

professional course concentrating on practical

The professional course be made compulsory

only for those who chose to practice law in

the

courts.

Post independe t era

Three Committee Reports

1. Expert Committee on Legal Aid of the Ministry of Law and Justice under the chairmanship of Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer 1973.

modifying the law school curriculum to focus on the needs of citizens,

introducing clinical legal education in law schools with a focus on socio-economic poverty,

requiring law student to engage in public service while in law school.

Link between legal aid and legal education reform

Committee on National Juridicare: Equal Justice–Social Justice.1977

Need to establish legal aid clinics in the law colleges, and they would offer the opportunity for both skills training and sensitizing students to the broader social obligations of the legal profession.

Need to develop a cadre of clinical law teachers, to introduce legal-aid related subjects such as law and poverty and law and society, and to give academic support to law school clinics.

Amending the Advocates Act to enable both law teachers and students to represent the clients under a legal aid program.


3.Committee for Implementing Legal Aid Schemes (CILAS), in 1981 Under Chief Justice P.N. Bhagwati. Court- or litigation oriented legal aid

programs could not alone provide social justice in India.

Therefore, it promoted legal literacy projects, the organization of legal aid camps to carry legal services to the doorsteps of the people,

Training of para-legals to support legal aid programs

bringing class actions by way of public interest litigation.


To improve the standard of legal profession First National Law School was established in Bangalore under the directorship of Prof. Madhava Menon

National Law School followed integrated approach in teaching law and introduce f years LL.B.

Several non law subject were introduced Interdisciplinary approach was followed Clinical legal education was the forefront

of the national law school

Establishing National Law Schools

Justice A.M. Ahmadi Report1. the general standard of law colleges in

the country was deteriorating and that the syllabus should be revised to include practical subjects so that the students could get professional training.

2. Make Professional Ethics a compulsory subject, with a minimum of 50% marks.

3. “Every University shall endeavor to supplement the lecture method with the case method, tutorials and other modern techniques of imparting legal education” must be made compulsory for all courses.


4. Make participation in moot courts, mock trials, and debates compulsory, with marks.

5. develop practical training in drafting pleadings and contracts in the last year of the study.

6. make student visits at various levels to the courts compulsory.

7. Require every law graduate to be trained in an apprenticeship of at least 12 to 18 months with a senior lawyer with at least 10 to 15 years standing at a district court or high court.


8. Introduce Bar Exam. 9. Students attend 3 months in lower civil

court and 3 months in a Magistrates Court, and at least 6 months in a District court or High Court.

10.Marks on the qualifying exam must be at least 50% in order to receive a license from the State bar Councils.

11.Establish more national law schools (at present 10 National Law Schools are established)


Bar Council of India As a response to Ahmadi Report BCI

Introduced one year apprenticeship. Supreme Court of India stuck down the

rule on technical grounds In 1997 Bar Council of India by a

circular made compulsory for all the law colleges to impart clinical legal education through four practical papers

These Papers are designed on the line of National Law School Bangalore


1. Moot court and pretrial preparations

2. Drafting, pleading and conveyancing

3. Professional ethics and Bar Bench

relations

4. Legal aid and public interest lawyering


Law Commission of India 184th Report (2002) law schools supplement the lecture and case

method with the problem method, moot courts, mock trials and other modern teaching methods.

direct law schools to include practical training, including 4 mandatory practical papers including Legal Aid.

need to train new lawyers in the skills of analysis, language, drafting, and argument and suggested that various studies on training lawyers, including the MacCrate Report of the American Bar Association, could be consulted.


Curriculum Development Committee REPORT: To make legal education socially relevant it

must draw commitment from the Preamble and Fundamental Duties enshrined in Part – IV A of the Indian Constitution.

CDC emphasized on role of legal education in developing law as a hermeneutical profession.

Explaining the role of a lawyer “A lawyer is not just an advocate for a client, a member of the class of ‘hired knife-thrower’. A lawyer also plays diverse roles of a legislator (in drafting contracts, wills, memoranda of resolution out of court) and even as a de facto judge when she advises: ‘This is not a fit case to file or appeal’


Curriculum Development Committee REPORT: HRD through legal education should

encompass development of all these role skills and sensibilities.

But it warns that developing legal education does not mean producing efficient professionals. Though it is important to produce efficient professionals, the underlying model of professionalism is liked with struggles for social justice, the maintenance of the rule of law and of democratic development.


Curriculum Development Committee REPORT: HRD through legal education should

encompass development of all these role skills and sensibilities.

But it warns that developing legal education does not mean producing efficient professionals. Though it is important to produce efficient professionals, the underlying model of professionalism is liked with struggles for social justice, the maintenance of the rule of law and of democratic development.


Majority of the time CDC focused on modernizing the syllabi and multidisciplinary approach to curriculum.

Subjects like Law and poverty, Law and Rural development, and Urbanization and Law were introduced.


Curriculum Development Committee 2000

A notable change proposed was introducing practical examination.

Practical examination will be conducted at the end of second semester on research Methodology, Law teaching and Clinical work.

25 marks out of 100 were allotted for clinical work.


Knowledge Commission – 2007

Recommended to remove Bar council of India from controlling legal education

Establish a Professional body to revamp the legal education in the lines of Medicine and Engineering


Imparting effective value-based and skill-based education is a matter of great concern.

The effort to provide lawyers these skills heavily lies on law schools, particularly in India.

Students graduate from law school in India can straightaway enter the legal profession.

No requirement for apprenticeships or to take bar exams.

Future of Legal Education in India

Establishing National Law schools with view to produce competent and socially sensible lawyers had a partial successes.

They are successful in producing more competent lawyers for the corporate sector but failed completely in producing socially relevant lawyers

Even traditionally good law schools producing lawyers more for the corporate and LPO’s


Make legal education socially relevant and professionally significant.

Redesign the curricula, teaching methods and materials

Identify new tools to shape future lawyers and judges.

Experimentations of social context education.


Challenges for law teachers: How to meet unmet legal needs particularly in rural areas

Preparing the law students to meet those unmet legal needs

Developing equality jurisprudence in all branches of substantive law


Transforming Legal Education in to Justice Education:

1. Integrative transformation: Traditional subjects need to be integrated(need

make it more contextual) Integrated methodology of teaching theory into

practice. What is right to food (theory) How to implement (practice mode) (ex. Where

are the finances how to use the finance, what kind of mechanism required to implement)

How to reconcile normative law with implementation.


Transforming Legal Education in to Justice Education:

2. Justice Transformation: Concentration on end point justice education

will transform the beginning stage of policy making.


5 Training of Trainers workshops conducted in five regions of IndiaBy Menon Institute of Legal Advocacy and Training, South Asian Forum of Clinical Law Teachers In Association with Active participation of GAJE members Frank Bloch, Clark Cunningham, Martine Gere.

Efforts to Transform Legal Education in to Justice Education

5 TOTs workshops in five regions of India1. May 2007 Bangalore for Southern region2. September 2007 Bhopal for Central

Zone3. September 2007 Pune for Western Zone4. December 2007 New Delhi for Northern

Zone5. December 2007 Kolkata for Eastern

Zone


Diploma in Para legal services through Distance education -IGNOU


COMMUNITY LEGAL AID CENTRES Goa

Documents

Legal Education in India Past Present & Future M.R.K. Prasad V.M. Salgaocar College of Law, Goa India