Introduction:
It is safe to consider that the Indian Legal Education System is one of the biggest in the world. Despite not having any of its top institutions in the top 200 law institutes in the world, India has fared well in this field and many of its graduates in the past have been a part of history-making landmark judgements. However, just like every other education stream in India, the legal education system is also plagued with problems.
What Could be the Problem(s)?
Asking this one question is going to change nothing. There is a ‘before’ in the legal education system and there is an ‘after’ in the system also. Sandwiched between these two, the legal education system is plagued with problems.
Firstly let us deal with the ‘Before’ aspect:
Before 12th graduates choose to become law students, they have little to no knowledge about the taxing demands of the field. They’re like deer stuck in headlights when they come to know of the sheer magnanimity of the syllabus to be covered and learnt and no experts of the field make any efforts to diffuse the fears.
Moot competitions, memorial drafting and submissions, citations and sticking to one form of it, ADR competitions, ranks and marks- all of these would seem like ancient Latin to any fresher and he/she will be disillusioned at the first. Not everyone gets to recover from this shock in less time, especially the students who are first-generation lawyers. First-generation lawyer kids need to be encouraged and motivated to ensure that they don’t lose their self-confidence. We only see career guidance camps only when a student is about to finish school. This must be changed and career guidance camps need to be started from when a child enters high school (IXth Grade).
Students need to make a clear cut choice of what he wants to be and decide to pursue all avenues of achieving it. For this, they need to be exposed to all kinds of career choices at an early stage and they also need to learn about the risks that come along with the field.
Secondly, let us deal with the education part:
Things get a lot convoluted here. College shouldn’t make a big deal about marks. That age-old concept should be left in the school system itself. College is the place where you learn for your profession and how best to be at it. Your marks shouldn’t define your attitude and behaviour and morality and conscience. Just because a person gets excellent marks in a subject doesn’t mean that he is well versed in that particular subject.
Marks shouldn’t play an important role in any field because when you come down to the matter, marks are just a means to see who can swallow a lot of information from books that are the size of your arm and spew it on white papers. This concept should be left behind in matriculation schools and not practised in colleges.
Law colleges need to be made into a place where experience is gained and rote learning is discouraged. The notion that students are failures with fewer marks need to be abolished and teachers who preach that must be suspended. Marks will never be enough in the legal stream. There needs to be a human touch, a human conscience and a human experience in this field. Just by learning the laws no one can become a trained professional, we should know where and when to use in order to get the best results possible
Students should change their attitude of law just being a ‘subject’. Law is never a subject; the law is a way of life. It isn’t for everyone, but everyone must respect and honour it. There needs to be a motivation inculcated in students to better themselves and dedicate themselves to it and this motivation needs to come from the teachers. The legal education system comprises of the students and the teachers. If you want the students to change, the teachers need to get better. Teachers need to have the knowledge to motivate and inspire their students. They need to be viewed as clay to be moulded into better people and not vessels to dump your beliefs in. They need to be treated as future leaders and not as mark grabbers. They need to be made to work hard to gain experience, not to work hard to slug for marks. Ultimately if teachers force students to work hard in a pointless endeavour, they’ll always find creative solutions to bypass everything. It will serve society better if those creative minds are made to brainstorm solutions and not to find shortcuts.
Thirdly let us deal with the ‘after’ aspect of the legal education system:
If you’re going to produce students who have no motivation in life other than to gain marks, marks and more marks and not to learn street knowledge, what are they going to do in life when they’re confronted with real-world problems that can’t be solved with marks? Marks are ultimately just a piece of paper and they don’t necessarily reflect your qualifications. Your experiences are your qualifications.
The world outside of colleges is at most selfish and backstabbing. People are cruel and will break your heart at the drop of a hat. They don’t call it a dog eats dog world for nothing. However, this is more than that.
You grow up learning about the virtue of law and how it is the guardian spirit of the land. But the moment you step out of college, you realise that this is a lawless world. Vikas Dubey died without undergoing trial, Dr Kafeel is still in jail, Safoora Zargar was inhumanly jailed under an inhuman law, the Police turned a blind eye to thousands of Muslims who were being targeted and attacked in Delhi and India rapidly evolving from the world’s biggest democracy to the world’s largest fascist dictatorship can shatter a student’s belief in the legal system of our country. India is the country where a person who incites hatred and riots by telling his supporters to ‘shoot down all the bastards who oppose their leaders’ won’t be jailed for instigating riots but an activist who raises her voice against cruelty and inhumanity will be jailed for months in hand. It doesn’t matter if she was pregnant or a Muslim, all that matters as she was jailed using an inhuman law because she protested against another inhuman law.
(The views expressed henceforth are of the personal view of the author)
I’m a third-year law student in a central university in the state of Tamil Nadu. When I learned that Safoora Zargar was arrested, I wasn’t disturbed much. I wasn’t disturbed when she was arrested under a draconian law because you don’t expect anything more from a fascist government. I was however surprised at the fact that trolls and BJP supporters took to Twitter to slut-shame her and slander her reputation. They called her a bitch for conceiving a child out of wedlock. You wouldn’t want to call your mother or your sister that word but you’ll hide behind the computer and deliver your biased and pathetic judgement. My blood boiled reading all those tweets and I wished terrible pain on all of them who had heartlessly ripped apart a woman for being pregnant of her own choice.
I then understood that the syllabus I’m learning at college is useless. On the one hand, the ruling government is using the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) to jail protesters and activists with just a prima facie case. This law allows for a person to be jailed without a valid case is against him/her. Hundreds of Muslims have been arrested and jailed under this act without a valid cause. It certainly begs the question of whether this law was enacted to curtail and suppress the Right to Speech and Freedom which each and every citizen of this country should enjoy.
I learnt that it was a crime to be a Muslim in this so-called secular land. I learnt that it was a crime to follow your religious practices and eat beef. I learnt that if you raise your voice against the ruling government, you were an anti-national/terrorist. I learnt that I have no rights in this country that I live in. I learnt that raising my voice in this country is a crime. I learnt that a woman is judged based on her virginity in this country. I learnt that everything that I’ve learned until now has been an utter waste of my time and resources because I’ve been fed false information all my life.
There is no right to equality in this country. Upper caste Hindus discriminate like no other community in this country. There is no right to speech and expression in this country because if I raise my voice against the ruling government, I can be jailed for ‘inciting a riot’ and be labelled as an anti-national/terrorist. There is no right to choice in this country. There is no right to religion in this country.
I could go on and forth but I believe that I’ve already painted a bleak picture.
Students need to be made to understand that knowledge is useless when the world refuses to accept it. It is useless to learn about Article 14 when we don’t treat each other as equals. There is no use in believing in the autonomy of the courts when policemen are hailed as heroes when they give heed to public sympathy instead of due process.
Overall it is useless to study law and everything related to it when the Judiciary is just a toy to be played with by the Executive. It is not the Legal Education System that needs to be changed, it is the humans who learn from it who should be changed. We are the problem and we are the ones who must be solved.
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