Dear Madam,
The Bar Council of India has proposed the introduction of a bar council examination that law graduates must pass in order to start practising law. The proposal follows a Supreme Court order dated 14 December 2009 in which the court stressed the need for such an examination in order to determine whether new graduates entering the profession were suitable to practise law in the country.
In addition, the Bar Council of India has unveiled plans to make it mandatory for all law students to get actively involved in legal aid, especially in rural areas, for four months in their final year. They will also be required to undertake a six-month compulsory internship in a trial court at the start of their legal careers.
To a certain extent these moves are all welcome. However, several issues need to be given careful consideration before the proposals are finalized. In particular, the Bar Council of India should set out detailed criteria to determine which students will be required to take the examination. In so doing, it must consider the course curriculum of each law school in order to decide whether a graduate from that particular college actually needs to take the examination.
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The move to make involvement in legal aid compulsory is most welcome. As a lawyer, one has to fight for justice for those whose rights have been curtailed and India is a developing country where over 60% of the population live in the rural areas and cannot afford to fight for their rights. However, instead of making it compulsory for four months in the final year, it could be made compulsory for two weeks in each of the two four-month semesters every year, or for two weeks a year (in either of the two semesters) for students who have already completed internships that included an element of legal aid.
With regards to the proposal to require law graduates to complete compulsory six-month internships in trial courts, it should be noted that students, especially those in five-year law programmes, already complete trial-court internships during their earlier years at law school. Such internships are normally undertaken before students study procedural laws, such as the Civil Procedure Code or the Code of Criminal Procedure, and hence it is important to undertake another internship in the lower courts after studying these subjects. It may be more effective, therefore, to make it mandatory for graduates to complete two-month internships in either the fourth or fifth year of a five-year law programme, or in the final year of a three-year law programme irrespective of whether they have interned in the trial courts in their earlier years at law school.
Finally, it is important that these proposals should apply to all law graduates, i.e. not only to those who plan to join the bar but also to those who aspire to work in non-litigious roles with law firms, in-house legal departments and legal process outsourcers. All lawyers render legal advice and need to know the basic principles of the courts, even if they do not intend to practise in them.
Vikrant Pachnanda
Director
India Law Journal
New Delhi
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