It has taken less than a week under the stewardship of Chief Justice B R Gavai for the Supreme Court to signal a significant institutional shift — one that may have far-reaching consequences for how we imagine justice, opportunity, and access in the legal profession. On May 20, in a judgment authored by Chief Justice Gavai, the Court reinstated the mandatory requirement of three years of legal practice for candidates aspiring to enter the judicial service. In doing so, it overturned its own decision from 2022, which had allowed fresh law graduates to appear for judicial service examinations, recognising the diminishing attractiveness of the judiciary after prolonged exposure to other parts of the legal ecosystem.
On the face of it, the reasoning offered lacks an empirical basis. Judges, the Court reminds us, are entrusted with life, liberty, and reputation from the first day they assume office. Bookish knowledge, it argues, cannot replace the textured learning that comes from navigating the courtroom floor. The reasoning has an air of institutional solemnity. And yet, it misses the lived realities of those at the very margins of our legal education and profession.
At its core, the Constitution is not merely a document of legal commands — it is a vision of transformation. Legal education, judicial appointments, and the structures of public employment must therefore be seen through the lens of accessibility and equal opportunity, not merely formal qualifications. The Court’s decision, while doctrinally plausible, inadvertently shifts the judiciary’s entry gate further away from those whom it ought to draw in.
Legal education in India has become increasingly exclusionary. In national law universities, with steep admission and tuition fees and the unspoken cultural capital required to succeed — internships, networking, language fluency — access is not merely about clearing an exam, but surviving an ecosystem. For students from marginalised backgrounds who nonetheless find their way into these institutions, mainstream recruitment pipelines — whether corporate or litigation — remain elusive. Judicial service, in contrast, has often served as the lone dignified professional pathway. Apart from the top 10-15 national law schools, given the lack of any placement opportunities, students from most other law schools find the judiciary to be the only professional pathway with a sustained source of income after graduation.
The Supreme Court places significant faith in the value of three years of practice, portraying it as a crucible of legal learning. But the nature of that “experience” deserves scrutiny. Across metropolitan and capital cities alike, fresh law graduates entering litigation are often unpaid, under-recognised, and structurally disempowered. The courtroom may offer insights — but not all are privileged to receive them. In many cases, juniors are reduced to clerical assistants in the name of mentorship. Their legal knowledge atrophies even as their daily exhaustion grows. The Bar Council of India, last year, had come out with a “non-binding” circular recommending a minimum stipend of Rs 20,000 to juniors in urban areas and Rs 15,000 in rural areas. For a young law graduate, living on Rs 20,000 in a city such as Delhi is nothing short of a daily struggle for sustenance.
To insist on this path as a precondition for judicial entry is to romanticise a phase that, for many, is marked not by learning, but by attrition.
The mechanism proposed to verify this experience — the requirement of a certificate from an advocate of 10 years’ standing, endorsed by a judicial officer — opens another troubling door. It places disproportionate power in the hands of seniors, many of whom may use this certificate as leverage to extract unpaid labour. It ties juniors down, denying them the flexibility to shift chambers or report mistreatment. The certificate becomes not a proof of competence, but a token of submission.
This is not a legal apprenticeship. This is quiet coercion, systematised.
If the objective is to ensure well-prepared judges, the solution need not lie in delaying their entry. Instead, we must reimagine how we train our future judges. Judicial academies must be strengthened, training pedagogies must evolve, and the service itself could include a post-selection immersion phase. There could be a two-year intensive pre-service programme — where selected candidates engage in structured court exposure, and monitored training under a group of well-regarded senior lawyers empanelled for this task after clearing the exam, but before assuming judicial office. This would balance the need for courtroom familiarity with the constitutional promise of equal access to public office.
The judiciary, unlike other professions, carries a unique constitutional charge — it must not merely be competent, but representative and accessible. By re-erecting the gate of experience, the Court risks turning judicial service into a domain of the already-initiated, rather than a ladder of social mobility.
The robes of a judge must not be stitched from privilege. They must be cut from the cloth of constitutional aspiration.
And that cloth, today, feels just a little more frayed.
The writer is a Delhi-based advocate and research fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy
