Legal Education In India

Legal education is India is passing through a transformation phase. For a very long period of time, legal education in India has been ignored. This is more so regarding specialised courses and higher legal education in India.

If we analyse the numbers of masters in law and doctors of law in India, the figure is not very pleasant. Very few law graduates prefer to opt for master and doctorate degrees. This is largely attributable to the academic nature of our legal system that is neither competitive nor professional in nature.

If we keep on teaching theoretical aspects of law and that also belonging to the era of 1980s, little is expected from the law graduates. The resulting output of lawyers is not qualitative and a majority of them re law graduates but not professional lawyers.

Defective policy decisions are also responsible for poor quality of lawyers in India. The Ministry of Law and Justice has not yet come out with a legal education policy that can help in producing qualitative legal personnel in India.

The quality of legal education is presently managed by the Bar Council of India (BCI). However, even the BCI has failed to maintain the quality of legal education in India. Neither law universities/faculties not BCI are doing much in this regard.

Take the example of recent bar examination proposed by the BCI after getting a law degree. The proposed bar examination of India 2011 is faulty on many counts. It is just a formality with no quality testing purpose. If the test is not going to check the quality of lawyers entering the litigation stream, there is no sense in having the same.

Legal education in India needs serious reforms. Presently, the legal education is not professional in nature, suffers from being excessive academic in nature and is producing law graduates who lack good research and analytical skills.

Foreign universities and institutions are looking towards India for establishing their branches or centers but the poor quality of education and bad policies are restraining them from doing so. Hopefully Law Minister Veerappa Moily would look into the matter urgently.

Continuing Legal Education In India

Continuing legal education in India (CLE in India) is a very new field. In India, not much attention is paid to higher legal education and even lesser to PhD and other specialised courses. This is so because legal education in India is not up to the mark and there is no implemental legal education policy in India.

Legal education in India needs urgent reforms. Some of the reforms that legal education in India must have include encouragement of higher legal education, research oriented legal education, professional and contemporary legal education, practical legal education and so on.

However, of all these reforms, nothing is more pressing than the requirement to have CLE in India. Presently, neither the Law Ministry of India nor the Bar Council of India (BCI) is providing CLE in India. Of course, they are mentioning about CLE but mere mention is not enough to actually implement it successfully in India.

Even worst is the techno legal area that has not even found a mention in the works of Law Ministry and BCI. The only instance of techno legal CLE in India can be found in a private initiative started by Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB).

PTLB is providing techno legal CLE in India and techno legal lifelong learning in India. To extend its reach and educational initiatives, it has also launched many online platforms where students, professionals, lawyers, judges, CEOs, etc can be enrolled and trained.

Law Minister Veerappa Moily must incorporate necessary policy related issues of CLE in India, lifelong learning in India and higher legal education in India in an effective legal education policy of India.