A learner’s guide to law

Admittedly the BCI, as the apex body, has to maintain standards of excellence both in legal education and within the profession. However, these laudable objectives cannot be achieved simply by closing down evening law colleges. In fact, students from these institutions are comparatively more serious and count many an upright judges and eminent lawyer as part of their fraternity. Since most of the students in these colleges have already been exposed to other areas of knowledge and information, a duration of three to four hours in an evening college is long enough for them to grasp the various facets of the law.

One can appreciate the BCI’s effort to make the LL.B. a professional course by incorporating four compulsory papers of practical training into it. However, this needs the necessary infrastructure as well as willingness on the part of the bar to allow students to observe the procedure of filing suits.

As far as deterioration in standards of legal education is concerned, it is not confined to evening law colleges alone. Not all the teachers and students in the various colleges teaching law take a keen interest in their studies. The BCI, it seems, has not gone deep into the root of the malaise plaguing our law institutions throughout the country. In fact, the BCI is not sufficiently equipped to improve the standards of legal education. The task can be better accomplished by universities in close interaction with the Bar Council.

Together they must ensure an emphasis on admission procedures, teaching methods, improved courses and a strict adherence to the standards laid down. Unfortunately, the Bar Council often proceeds on the fallacy that it is the sole repository of all wisdom and considers legal education as its exclusive preserve. Universities are seldom taken into confidence and the teaching community rarely consulted. If the Bar Council is interested in improving things, it should think seriously of introducing an entrance test at an all-India level and only those who qualify should be issued licences to practise law.

Our legal system does not have adequate safeguards to protect new entrants into the profession. This issue came before the Supreme Court in P.D. Khandekar vs. Bar Council of Maharashtra and the court made these significant observations: “It is the solemn duty of the Bar Council of India and the State Bar Council to fr-ame proper schemes for the training of junior members of the bar, for entrusting work to them and for their proper guidance so that eventually we have a new generation of efficient trained lawyers.

It is regrettable that even after more than two decades that the Advocates Act was br-ought on the Statute Book, neither the BCI nor the State bar Council have taken any positive steps towards ameliorating the conditions of the members of the bar…” Eleven years have elapsed since the apex court made these observations but nothing has happened so far.

Over the years, the BCI has merely confined itself to laying down rules on paper without bothering to monitor their implementation. For instance, recognition to law colleges are granted in the absence of infrastructural and other facilities. As a result, there has been a mushrooming of bogus colleges distributing fake degrees.

In the final analysis, legal education will not improve merely by prescribing new curricula or shutting down evening law colleges. It needs certain pre-requisites and infrastructural facilities, like well-equipped libraries, proper buildings with modern amenities, a distinguished teaching faculty, good reading material, and so on. It also needs a new vision.The writer is a senior legal consultant, based in Delhi