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Reinventing the Legal Profession for India: Proposals for Lawyers & Non-Lawyers

Writer's picture: Communications TeamCommunications Team


This insight is a miniature proposal from the VLiGTA Team on how to change the way the Legal Profession in India exists, in multiple streams, such as the academia, litigation, corporate jobs, dispute resolution, freelancing, consulting and other categories of legal professions.


This insight will keep updating the list of proposals we have offered to shape and reinvent the legal profession in India. Hence, this is not a final insight per se.


The proposals we have suggested are in tandem with how people and stakeholders in the policy, industry and social sector space in India, who are not a part of the legal industry, could be helped by making some reasonable changes in various categories of legal professions. These suggestions are proposed to promote a healthy discourse. Nevertheless, in case we proceed with a deeper analysis, we would convert our proposals into a technical report. Hence, these suggestions must be understood with a reflective angle.


The approach we have adopted is to propose solutions, and offer context to achieve policy clarity.


The Legal Academia must be a Separate Class of Professionals


It is appreciative that the Supreme Court of India and the members of the Bar have endorsed the creation of an Arbitration Bar in India, and have promoted court-ordered arbitration and mediation processes. Nevertheless, as for advocates - we have the Bar Council of India as a representative body, and for the National Law Universities - a Consortium to conduct CLAT and make key decisions, it is now more than important to have a proper Indian Council of Legal Academicians, which represents the interest of law teachers in India, who teach, research and work in universities. This must include all assistant professors, associate professors, full professors, lecturers, research associates and even fellows as designated by the University Grants Commission. An alternative could be to transfer the authority to regulate legal education in India to the University Grants Commission. Let us understand why have we proposed this. Although it is a contentious issue, but it would be untenable to have legal education regulated without teachers. Although the UGC regulations apply on legal education, law teachers are more capable and in a better state to handle matters of legal education. The fact that we do not focus on having better law academics from research associates to professors across law schools and departments in India, has led us to such a point that except few top law schools in India (maybe between 10-15, both government and private), the quality or standard of legal teaching has gone down. In fact, it has ossified even so further that vacancies for key and elective legal subjects has been on a rise. Further, lack of competence and experience comes from the fact that India's legal education system does not incentivise better pay and better work approach to become effective legal academics. However, for a new India where we are intending to become a key player in the Global South, we would have to improve legal education at a mass level.


That is why standardisation of representation is needed. A hybrid model could be to first create a separate Indian Council of Legal Academicians in India, and then give dual authority to both the Bar Council of India and the Council of Legal Academicians to regulate legal education, be it professional, academic or executive in nature. However, in certain matters, the say of the Indian Council of Legal Academicians must be preferable by law. In that case, the Bar Council of India is not deprived of its authority, and the Indian Council of Legal Academicians. An act of Parliament could establish ICLA as a statutory authority, which could have 2 key bodies - an Executive Council, and a Representative Council. The Executive Council may have the Chairperson as an academic, with other members of the Council being one bureaucrat from the Ministry of Education, one bureaucrat from the University Grants Commission and a few academicians. The Representative Council could have academicians and researchers in the field of law represented from various parts of India, of various levels, as designated by the UGC, and also those who work in think tanks and research institutes. Again, these suggestions are proposed to promote a healthy discourse.


Legal Education must be Democratised, Schematised and Digitised


There are serious issues in how law teachers and educational institutio