Clinical Legal Education Jha

An assignment of Clinical
education
Topic:-History of Clinical Education: An Indian
and International perspective

Under the guidance of Dr.Asad Malik sir

ISHA GULZAR, BALLB (H.), 7th Semester, 4th year
History of Clinical education: An Indian and International perspective

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PREFACE

The legal education is the basis of an efficient legal profession which is the basis of a
well-organized and sound judicial system .Unfortunately the legal education was not paid
due attention during the British period and even after independence it has been the most
neglected branch of the education.
It is a matter of pleasure that the Bar Council of India has taken the legal education very
seriously and has made commendable efforts for its improvement .One of the pitfalls of
the legal education is that it has put less emphasis on the practical training of the subject.
This assignment makes an effort to make the readers aware of the historical development
of the system if clinical legal education in India and its very importance.
The material has been collected from various sources. This assignment contains material
on the Historical Approach towards Clinical Legal Education and its development in
India and abroad.
I hope it serves as a good and helpful read to all the readers.


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METHODOLOGY

This assignment has been prepared on the doctrinal type of methodology. The material
has been collected from various sources that of articles, books various law journals,
newspapers and internet. It contains viewpoint of many jurists and advocates.
The material was collected and arranged in order. This assignment emphasizes on the
Historical Approach towards Clinical Legal Education in India. In order to make it easily
understandable,
In the last section, a conclusion is given that concludes the topic and gives a quick gist of
the whole subject.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I extend my heartfelt gratitude and sincere thanks to my clinical law teacher Dr.
Asad Malik for his encouragement and full cooperation throughout the
completion of this assignment. Without his guidance and support this
assignment would never have been possible.

THANK YOU SIR


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SYNOPSIS

Introduction
Defining Clinical Legal Education
Why clinical legal education in India?
Clinical Legal Education in India and the United States: A Comparative
Overview
Benefits of clinical education
What is a Legal Clinic
Types of Legal Clinics
History of Clinical Legal Education
Development of Clinical legal Education In India
Global Development Of Clinical Legal Education
Legal Education Reform and Law School-based Legal Aid Clinics in
India: Laying the groundwork for Social Justice based Clinical Legal
Education
Efforts to link legal aid and legal education reform
Reviewing Clinical Legal Education
Clinical Legal education and practical training papers
Conclusion


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INTRODUCTION

As we enter the new millennium, the movement beyond the casebook method to the wider
integration of clinical methodology throughout the curriculum stands on a solid intellectual
foundation. Yet, although clinical legal education is a permanent feature in legal education,
too often clinical teaching and clinical programs remain at the periphery of law school
curricula. Doctrine, theory, and skills cannot be appreciated if they are introduced without
engaging the pathos of the human issues that the lawyer encounters when representing
clients. So little attempt has been made to reflect this relationship that the goals of the legal
academy have been called into question. Professor Richard Neumann puts it this way:
Because it does not expect itself to produce practitioners, legal education is in some ways
closer to graduate liberal arts education than it is to professional education as other
professions define it. . . . It would be unthinkable to graduate physicians with no clinical
clerkships or architects with no experience in a design studio.
1

The term, "clinical legal education" was first used by Jerome Frank, in 1933 in United States
in his article, "Why not a Clinical Lawyer School"
2
and has since then been the focus of
attention for improvement of legal education and for creating a synthesis between the law
schools and the legal profession. The legal clinic concept was first discussed at the turn of
the twentieth century by two professors as a variant of the medical clinic model. Russian
professor Alexander I. Lyublinsky in 1901, quoting an article in a German journal, and
American professor William Rowe, in a 1917 article, each wrote about the concept of a legal
clinic. Both professors associated it with the medical professions tradition of requiring
medical students to train in functioning clinics ministering to real patients under the
supervision of experienced physicians.

Clinical legal education is essential to preparing law students to practice law effectively.
Clinics are important because they prepare students to practice law by teaching them valuable
skills such as fact-finding, investigation, interviewing, and legal research and writing. In the

1
Richard K. Neumann, Jr., Donald Schon, The Reflective Practitioner, and the Comparative Failures of Legal
Education, 6 Clin. L. Rev. 401, 404 (2000).
2
81 UPA. L. Rev. 907 (1933)

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United States, law students learn these skills by undertaking projects or cases on behalf of
individuals, always under faculty supervision and guidance. Students also develop a sense of
social justice and empathy through their work with disenfranchised groups.Clinical Legal
Education (CLE) has been a significant part of legal education since 1960. The first clinic
started in U. K. in 1970 and in Australia in 1990s. The concept is fast expanding across the
globe also.
The clinical method allows students to confront the uncertainties and challenges of problem
solving for clients in fora that often challenge precepts regarding the rule of law and justice.
To say that the process of learning law in such a textured manner should be relegated to
a certain course or set of courses ignores what educational theorists have been saying for
years: that the best learning takes place when the broad range of abilities we possess is
engaged. According to Professor Barbara Woodhouse, "perhaps one of the most serious
failings in contemporary legal education is that all too many students graduate with a vast
doctrinal base of knowledge sealed within a context that is not translatable into practice."
3

The Clinical Legal Education is necessary to bridge a gap between theory and practice. The
aim of this article is to know the various types of Clinical legal Education, its necessity in
curriculum and current initiatives and practices in Indian Clinical Legal Education.

DEFINING CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION
The Clinical Legal Education can be defined in various ways
Clinical Legal Education is essentially a multi-disciplined, multipurpose education which
can develop the human resources and idealism needed to strengthen the legal system a
lawyer, a product of such education would be able to contribute to national development and
social change in a much more constructive manner.
4

3
John B. Mitchell, Betsy R. Hollingsworth, Patricia Clark & Raven Lidman, And Then Suddenly Seattle
University Was on its Way to a Parallel, Integrative Curriculum, 2 Clin. L. Rev. 1, 21 (1995).
4
KuljitKaur ,Legal Education and Social Transformation [available at:
http://alsonline.amity.edu/Docs/alwjlegkk.pdf] [viewed on: 25/06/2009]

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A learning environment where students identify, research and apply knowledge in a setting
which replicates, at least in part, the world where it is practiced. It almost inevitably means
that the student takes on some aspect of a case and conducts this as it would be conducted in
the real world.
5

a learning environment where students identify, research and apply knowledge in a setting
which replicates, at least in part, the world where it is practised.... It almost inevitably means
that the student takes on some aspect of a case and conducts this as it would ... be conducted
in the real world.
6

Prof. Sathe asked the pertinent question, "Is legal education all about imparting skills
of lawyering or does it also have to create a commitment to certain values?"
7

He opined :
A lawyer is not only a seller of services but he is a professional who renders services
for maintaining the rule of law. He is supposed to be an officer of the court. He has to have
commitment to certain values such as democracy, individual liberty, social and economic
equality including gender equality and concern for the disadvantaged sections of society
which will include the poor, women, the physically handicapped, children, the minorities and
the dalits. Legal education has to create such a commitment.

The Clinical Legal Education is a term which encompasses learning which is focused on
enabling students to understand how the law works in action. This can be done by
undertaking real or realistic simulated case work. In early days law is thought as one of the
curriculum available to the students. Even though the casebook method was growing in
earlier days, there were critics of this method from the beginning. However the first-hand
experience method will really educate the law students. The legal education clinics if

5
Richard Lewis, Clinical Legal Education Revisited Professor of Law, Cardiff University, Wales, United
Kingdom, Pg. 5 , [available at: http://www.law.cf.ac.uk/research/pubs/repository/21] [viewed on: 25/06/2009]
6
R. Grimes, The Theory And Practice Of Clinical Legal Education in J. Webb and C. Maugham (eds.)
Teaching Lawyers Skills (1996) at p 138.
7
S.P. Sathe- Keynote Address in roundtable discussion on community responsive legal education: trends in
South Asia, November 27-28, 2001, organised by the United States Educational Foundation in India in
collaboration with Pune Law College


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properly channeled may help the students to gain their knowledge. The use of the word
clinic prompts the analogy of trainee doctors meeting real patients in their medical clinics.
Clinical Legal Education is only one way in which theory and practice can be brought
together.
Now every nation is giving importance on the clinical legal education in order to groom their
future lawyers, the law makers, the executors, law officers, judges and law teachers to acquire
knowledge through a scientific method keeping pace with the ethics and philosophy of the
society. The objective of the clinical education is radical, reformative and dynamic.
The following are the basic features of the clinical legal education-
The students are to experience the impact of law on the life of the people.
The students are to be exposed to the actual milieu in which dispute arise and to
enable them to develop a sense of social responsibility in professional work.
The students are to be acquainted with the lawyering process in general and the skills
of advocacy in particular.
(iv)The students are to critically consume knowledge from outside the traditional
legal arena for better delivery of legal services.
The students are to develop research aptitude, analytical pursuits and communicating
skills.
They are to understand the limit and limitations of the formal legal system and to
appreciate the relevance and the use of alternate modes of lawyering.
They are to imbibe social and humanistic values in relation to law and legal process
while following the norms of professional ethics
A legal clinic (also law clinic or law school clinic) is a law school program providing hands-
on-legal experience to law school students and services to various clients. Clinics are usually
directed by clinical professors.
8
Legal clinics typically do pro bono work in a particular area,
providing free legal services to clients.
Students typically provide assistance with research, drafting legal arguments, and meeting
with clients. In many cases, one of the clinic's professors will show up for oral argument

8
Black's Law Dictionary, 6th Edition, "clinical legal studies," (St. Paul, Minn: West Publishing Co., 1990), 254

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before the Court. However, many jurisdictions have "student practice" rules that allow law-
clinic students to appear and argue in court.
910

Clinical legal education may be simply described as learning through application, practice
and reflection. It is quite different from the traditional legal education. The lecture- seminar
method so common in the education of the law students does not meet the clinical demands,
however they are vital as they render vital information being predominantly content and
assessment led. Clinical legal education is directed towards developing the perceptions,
attitudes, skills and sense of responsibilities which the lawyers are expected to assume when
they complete their professional education. It can, therefore, be as broad and varied as the law
school curriculum would accommodate; certainly it is not limited to the mere training in
certain skills of advocacy. Clinical legal education has wider goals of enabling law students
to understand and assimilate responsibilities as a member of a public service in the
administration of law, in the reform of the law, in the equitable distribution of the legal
services in society, in the protection of individual rights and public.
Clinical teaching methods
Although clinical legal education learning methods are traditionally used to teach such
lawyering skills as interviewing and counseling, legal writing and drafting, fact finding, case
analysis, trial preparation and trial advocacy, they can also be used to teach substantive and
procedural law courses.

Depending on the nature of the law school's academic programme it may not always be
possible to replace lectures entirely with clinical teaching methods. However, where there is
scope for small group work, such as tutorials or practical sessions, it is possible to introduce a
wide variety of interactive clinical legal education teaching methods in order to illuminate the
substantive and procedural law curriculum for law students.
Some of the more common interactive learning methods include the following:
role plays

9
Louisiana Supreme Court Rule XXhttp://www.lasc.org/rules/supreme/RuleXX.asp
10
Uniform Local Rules Of The United States District Courts For The Eastern, Middle, And Western Districts Of
Louisiana, LR83.2.13, http://www.laed.uscourts.gov/LocalRules/Civil_83.htm


11

simulations
moots
mock trials
case studies
small group discussions
debates
'taking a stand'
'thinking on your feet' the PRES formula
games
triads
'fishbowls'
11

This concept of justice education that is clinical education in the field of legal education
means that the law school curriculum should entail certain programs like Lok Adalats, Legal
Aid & Legal Literacy and para-legal training. The complementary teaching methodology of
learning by doing and the conventional classroom teaching, through the law school clinics,
help in developing the advocacy skills in the law students. 'Mock' trials and Moot court
competitions, structured as court trial; client interviewing and counseling sessions; legal
research; editing of law journals; legal drafting and conveyancing; court visits etc. in the
curriculum is one of the ideal ways to facilitate performance based education. It is a means of
improving in students the basic skills such as the skills of critical thinking, presentation skills,
participation skills, the skills to work as a team, the leadership quality, in addition to the
boost in students knowledge of law

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DOMINICK R. VETRI , EDUCATING THE LAWYER: CLINICAL EXPERIENCE AS AN INTEGRAL
PART OF LEGAL EDUCATION


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Why Clinical Legal Education in India?
Clinics expose students to the impact that the practice of law has on people. No one should
pretend that they are prepared to practice without a sense of this impact and a constructive
way to think about it. This perspective has significant implications for the way legal
education is approached in India. It is law schools that must foster a contextual understanding
of what lawyers should do to meet the needs of the country. This means connecting students
with communities and involving them in creative solutions that focus on the common good.
The new model for law schools the law university grew out of a perceived need to
enhance the quality of legal education in India. The universities represent a bold move to
reinvent legal education practices. The practices that were found lacking in law schools were
overcrowded classrooms, lack of rigor in teaching, lack of attention to socio-economic
problems, and a general lack of preparation for professional practice. As with other law
schools in India, students come to the national law universities straight out of 10+2.
Arguably, these students are too young and their education too narrow to take full advantage
of professional training. In the United States, law is a post-graduate study; university
graduates enter law schools to obtain a doctorate in law. However, many other countries
follow a pattern similar to Indias, for economic if no other reasons.
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The expense of
attending college prior to preparing for professional practice can be prohibitive, particularly
when undergraduate study is imposed as a condition precedent. The universities offer a five-
year program, the first two years of which include social science and economics courses
along with law courses. Economics and an expansive view of access to education have led to
overcrowding in the professional institutions. The number of students attending law schools
in India does not necessarily represent vocation or an expectation of entering the profession;
students also enter law school as a matter of opportunity or indecision. The national law
universities narrowed this pool by raising admissions standards and charging students to
attend, setting aside scholarships to assure access to some of the qualified students who could
not otherwise matriculate.
Reflecting some attention to the Bar Councils Practical Paper requirements, students are
required at NALSAR Law University to spend time in practice settings in four of their five
years. The placements have the potential to allow students to interact with the legal

12
See, e.g., Frans J. Vanistendael, Quality Control of Students and Barriers to Access in West-European Legal
Education, 43 S. Tex. L. Rev. 691, 692 (2002)

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community and experience the law in context. However, the placements are apparently
student-run projects rather than the product of faculty supervision and educational rigor.
Students organize the placements, interact with the relevant offices and appear for work. The
school is not involved in this exchange in any meaningful way other than to register the fact
that each placement occurred.
Beyond these placements, experiential learning is limited at NALSAR to moot court and a
few classroom simulations. How did clinical legal education remain largely undeveloped in
this new institution given the goals that supported development of the law universities? In
part, the necessary emphasis placed on building physical facilities and attracting highly
qualified faculties and students provides insight. Establishing new institutions in which
traditional teachers organize the curriculum and teach the courses is not a prescription for
significant curricular change, even though the framework of fewer students and greater
resources suggest some opportunity for improvement. Lack of experience in clinical teaching,
the demand on teaching resources that clinics make and the Bar Councils failure to provide
institutional support for the clinical legal education espoused contribute to the difficulty
realizing desired change. Indeed, the Bar Council sends the message that law teachers are to
be disengaged from the practice of law by denying the license to practice it. Thus, the
substantive curricular changes articulated by Dr. Menon and urged in the many reports appear
to be eluding the new institutions, though, paradoxically, there is some evidence of progress
towards the articulated goals in other law schools. V. M. Salgaocar College of Law Legal Aid
Society, which began in 1998, is an example of what can be achieved in India, and is an
example of Indias potential as a leader the international clinical legal education movement. It
operates thirty-five permanent free legal aid cells throughout the state of Goa. Each cell
consists of a team of two students. The cells are set up and housed in government buildings,
schools, and church or temple premises. Students carry out awareness campaigns, provide
legal advice and pursue remedies such as meeting with the other party, meeting with
government officials and providing legal referral services. The students also perform
paralegal aid services, such as visiting jails, registering marriages, births, and deaths,
obtaining ration cards, and preparing affidavits. They also prepare and file documents that are
required for obtaining benefits under various welfare schemes. Students also work with
faculty members to petition relevant authorities who are obliged under law to remedy the
injustice. If relief is not provided, the students work with lawyers to file a petition before the
High Court. Students can argue these cases under special rules that allow any member of the

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public to present such cases Since interest in clinical legal education in India was nourished
by developments in the United States, to what extent is what has been happening in the
United States instructive?
Legal Education Reform in the United States
Legal education in the United States has been repeatedly criticized for its failure to
adequately prepare students for the practice of law. The critique has come in the form of
high-level reports, judicial commentary
13
and numerous law review articles that call for more
relevant training.
When Professor Langdell championed the casebook method and the use of Socratic dialogue
in the early 1900s, his goal was to establish legal education as an academic discipline. That
concern still casts a shadow that arguably dissociates legal education from significant aspects
of its obligation to develop professional competency. This is not to say that Langdells
method, particularly as it has evolved to include problem solving and critical studies, is not
important or relevant. It is recognize that more is needed. The concern that too much is asked
of law schools if they are expected to expose students to the law both in theory and practice
must not be the end of the analysis. Theory and practice are intertwined in law, as they should
be in any profession. This connection is not fully acknowledged by law schools, and the
educational programs have suffered as a result.
The Carnegie Foundation report, EDUCATING LAWYERS: PREPARATION FOR THE
PROFESSION OF LAW (2007), underscores the need for change in the approach to legal
education. The report cites the newly published BEST PRACTICES FOR LEGAL
EDUCATION: A VISION AND A ROADMAP, a project of the Clinical Legal Education
Association that takes an in depth look at all aspects of legal education in the United States
and recommends methods for improvement. Both books discuss the importance of clinical
programs and the use of clinical methodology across the curriculum to achieve the necessary
integration of substantive law and professional skills and values. All accredited law school in
the United States have clinical programs. Given the growth of clinical programs in law
schools in the United States, one might wonder why the statements continue to be made that
link their importance to needed improvement. A fundamental problem with the approach to

13
See Warren E. Burger, The Special Skills of Advocacy: Are Specialized Training and Certification of
Advocates Essential to Our System of Justice?, 42 Fordham L. Rev. 227 (1973); Harry T. Edwards, The
Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 34 (1992)

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clinical programs, and this is also true of skills courses in most U.S. law schools, is that
they are viewed as nonessential and/or unrelated to the substantive law courses offered. The
hard work of integrating experiential education into the curricula has not happened in this
profession, raising serious concerns about the quality of professional preparation.
What do clinical courses offer that these analyses and critiques of legal education find so
important? First of all, the emphasis on clinical programs addressing skills and values that
substantive law classes do not reach may suggest that clinical programs fully prepare students
to enter the profession as competent practitioners. No such argument is intended. Clinical
programs do well if they introduce students to the competencies they will need, strategies for
building expertise and critical assessment of the lawyers role. While the traditional
American classroom uses casebooks and the Socratic method to expose students to a body of
substantive material and develop their ability to analyze the material,
14
the range of
competencies that a clinical course seeks to develop is broader. They include interviewing,
fact investigation, an extensive application of problem solving skills, attorney-client relations,
negotiation and other alternative dispute resolution methods, ethical considerations, pre-trial
and trial skills. They are taught using methods that include role-playing, simulations,
brainstorming, highly interactive discussions, regular in-depth feedback, and direct client
representation. Significantly, they instruct by helping students to build on their experiences.
Second, clinical courses expose students to opportunities to use legal expertise to address
issues of social concern, particularly the needs of the poor. Regardless of whether students
intend to work in public interest law, they need to be aware of their obligations to contribute
to their communities and of the special role they are becoming equipped to play in addressing
a range of social problems. While the classroom can raise theoretical issues about social
justice, access to legal interventions and reform, understanding the problems in terms of
access, application, and sufficiency comes from well-supervised work with poor people.
Thus, these issues are best raised through direct service to disadvantaged clients, either
through representation or some other opportunity to work closely with them in order to
understand the problems and the attorneys special ability to provide effective assistance.
Clinical programs in law schools across the United States have addressed one or both of these
goals through experiences that are discussed below. The discussion considers these

14
See e.g. Robert J. Rhee, The Socratic Method and the Mathematical Heuristic of George Polya, 81 St. John's
L. Rev. 881 (2007)

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approaches in relation to what might make sense for the law universities, not as a prescription
for what should be the ultimate or ideal approach but rather as a way to begin to think about
moving along the path to implementing some of the reforms that have been advocated for so
long.
Clinical Legal Education in India and the United States: A Comparative Overview
Clinical legal education involves teaching students to be lawyers by learning through
experience or learning by doing. In the United States, clinics are typically organized as law
school classes where students, under faculty supervision, represent clients in a variety of
litigation and non-litigation matters. In addition to learning lawyering skills, clinical
education furthers social justice by providing legal representation to poor people and by
sensitizing law students to the concerns of marginalized groups in society. As such, law
school clinics have the potential to play an important role in making access to justice a reality
for many low-income people.
Clinical programs in American law schools burgeoned in the 1960s alongside the civil rights
movement and the national focus on eliminating poverty. Most clinics at the time engaged
students in providing routine legal services to local community members who could not
otherwise afford them. Today most law schools in the United States offer clinics as part of
their curricular offerings, in many different subject areas of law.
In India, there have been waves of national-level reform efforts concentrating on the
development of a skills-based curriculum.4 The Bar Council of India issued a directive in
1997 that requires law schools to include certain classes focused on practical training.5 Even
where schools have introduced these classes, however, it is common for more than eighty
students to be enrolled in one class. This makes it virtually impossible for instructors to
provide supervision to students in undertaking legal work. In a 2002 report, the Law
Commission of India suggested that clinical legal education be mandatory.6 Today there are a
number of legal aid cells in Indian law schools where students, largely without faculty
guidance or supervision, provide direct legal services to individuals.7 Despite these national
calls for reform, most law schools in India lack robust clinical education programs where
faculty directly supervise students in experiential learning. A recent UNDP report surveying
39 law schools with legal aid cells found that although 82% of those schools had faculty
designated to supervise legal aid cells, 63% of those schools gave no academic credit to

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students.8 Where law schools do undertake legal aid activities, most involve legal literacy
camps.9 According to this UNDP study, the key problems in developing clinical legal
education in India are that:
(1) no credit is given to students who undertake these activities, which is a disincentive to
students to conduct them and discourages them to follow through on their commitments;
(2) there is no workload reduction given to faculty who are designated to supervise legal aid
cells;
(3) communities are not aware that the law schools provide free legal services; and
(4) under the Advocates Act, full-time law teachers and students are not allowed to represent
clients before courts.10
Following the summary of these and additional challenges to developing law school clinics in
India found by this UNDP study
15
:
Lack of trained faculty
Lack of financial support
Restriction on faculty to practice in court of law
Restriction on students to represent clients in court
Lack of involvement of the Indian Bar
Lack of involvement of the Judiciary
Lack of specific directions from Bar Council of India
No academic credit to students for legal aid work
Legal aid not counted as faculty workload
Lack of infrastructural facilities

15
United Nations Development Programme India, A Study of Law School Based Legal Service Clinics 2
(2011), available at
http://www.in.undp.org/content/dam/india/docs/a_study_of_law_school_based_legal_services _clinics.pdf
(covering seven major states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, and Uttar
Pradesh)

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BENEFITS OF CLINICAL EDUCATION
There are many benefits which have been claimed to follow from clinical legal education
programmes. Only the main ones can be summarised here:-
(a) Learning by experience
The main advantage of clinical education is that, compared to traditional teaching methods, it
involves a different approach to the learning of law: it encompasses experiential learning, or
learning by doing. Instead of learning by means of traditional lectures where students are
often expected to be sponges reactively soaking up information students are much more
proactive participants in the learning process. It is their initiative which determines the scope
of the clients problem; and they plan and work for its solution. Such students are much more
likely to learn if they recognise that their success is determined by their own efforts rather
than external factors e.g. how good is the lecturer is, or what questions have previously been
asked on the exam paper.
In addition, if there is a clear purpose to what is being learned it is more likely to have an
effect. It is not so much what has been learned, but what can be done with what has been
learned. That is, it is applying the knowledge that is the key, not the learning of it. Clinical
education clearly gives opportunities for the knowledge to be applied, but it also goes beyond
this and calls for reflection and self examination. It gives students the opportunity to explain
why they are taking certain actions and they are able to discuss and reconsider their actions.
Legal practitioners themselves rarely have the time or opportunity to do this. Students, by
contrast, can examine the legal and social issues in some depth, and they can form the basis
for looking at the lawyers role and at legal ethics within a practical context. The result is that
what is learned is far more likely to remain with the student than the knowledge crammed for
an extremely artificial examination paper.
The contrast between experiential learning and the traditional information transmission model
of legal education can be stark. Treating students as merely empty vessels into which legal
information can be poured apparently without end - provides them with only a small part of
what they need in order to understand the nature and processes of law, and to operate
effectively as a practitioner. As a result the teaching of legal skills is now widely recognised

19

as a legitimate, even critical part of an effective legal education.
We now have a great deal of knowledge about how students learn. There is a considerable
literature on educational theory. It is important for law schools to understand and make
effective use of this information when considering how they achieve the educational goals
that either are set for them or they set for themselves. All too often in the past law schools
have operated as if they alone knew best how to teach and how students learn. That position
can no longer be maintained. Reformers of legal education, whether in Japan or elsewhere,
must look to the wider developments which have taken place in education generally if they
are to set up an effective and modern system for instructing students.

(b) Acquisition of skills
Experiential learning means moving away from an information-based syllabus caricatured by
rote or memory-based learning accompanied by condensed summary examinations. Instead
clinical education embraces a skills-based approach. This means paying as much attention to
the processes associated with legal practice e.g. the structure a letter, the interview with
the client, face to face negotiation as to the legal content of the rules forming the
background to the work done.
Their importance is specifically examined in the UK government report on legal education.
The skills include:-
Research skill especially where the relevant area of law is completely new.
Communication skills e.g. advocacy before differing tribunals or bodies.
Interviewing e.g. clients and witnesses. The law students traditional indoctrination
into a cross examiners style is revealed in clinical practice as inadequate and often
leading to obscuring the facts rather than discovering them. Instead students must
learn to relate to clients and e.g. develop active listening skills in order to obtain the
full facts.
Counselling e.g. helping sometimes bewildered clients to understand and deal with
events.

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Drafting with the supervision of Law teachers and professionals, the students are
able to understand the procedure of drafting various instruments required in court.
Negotiating the art of settlement for something instead of litigating for all reflects
much more the realities of legal practice and the use made of the law than does study
of formal accounts of those untypical disputes which are adjudicated by a court.
Problem solving seeing the full context of a clients problem and bringing together
what otherwise might be seen as distinct areas of legal study - e.g. contract, debt,
housing and land law, together with social security and civil procedure commonly
arise together in a landlord-tenant dispute.
Interpersonal and organisational skills including e.g. communicating and working
as a member of a team, helping to organise and maintain office procedures.
(c) Student motivation and development
Students who work in a legal clinic are enthusiastic about their experience. They are self-
motivated and often highly committed to the work. They are more responsible for what they
do and how they do it. In theory, the teachers role becomes more facilitative - helping
students discover solutions for themselves. My own disenchantment with law school when a
student is a feeling still shared by all too many students. To an extent involvement in clinical
work can help reduce such feelings, and can invigorate future study. It can cause students to
think again about what law school offers and what direction their future career could take.
Clinical experience puts colour in the empty outlines of the legal comic book. Questions
which were dull and meaningless become important and exciting. Answers which seemed
black and white become grey, red and green. Dull legal rules become memorable elements of
unforgettable events.

(d) Professional ethics and responsibility
The study of ethics and the professional responsibility and conduct of lawyers has been
markedly absent from law schools in contrast to medical schools. However, there has been a
growth of interest in this area in recent years, and it is a subject which arguably is better dealt
with in a clinical context where the often abstract notions can be given a practical context.

21

Whether educators can actually affect the development of students moral consciousness is
much open to debate. But at least the crucible of the clinic allows moral issues to be debated
more openly than within the confines of the traditional curriculum.
(e) Involvement with the local community
The image of the university as an ivory tower is often all too real in that it can be very
divorced from the environment in which it operates. Not only its students but also its staff can
be cut off from the local community. A law clinic can help reduce this isolation by making
the law school more relevant to that community. It can, for example, offer advice and
assistance to local people who might not otherwise obtain any help at all. The benefits of this
can operate in more than one direction. Most obviously, the most disadvantaged members of
society may gain some means of redress. But in addition the young student may be faced with
the problems of those from a different generation and background. This experience can add to
their understanding of the position of others in society, and can increase their maturity and
sense of responsibility. They have to deal with problems without becoming so emotionally
involved with clients as to have their judgement clouded.

WHAT IS A LEGAL CLINIC ?
A legal clinic (also law clinic or law school clinic) is a law school program
providing hands-on-legal experience to law school students and services to
various clients.
16

Clinics are usually directed by clinical professors. Legal clinics typically do pro
bono work in a particular area, providing free legal services to clients. Students
typically provide assistance with research, drafting legal arguments, and
meeting with clients. In many cases, one of the clinic's professors will show up
for oral argument before the Court. However, many jurisdictions have "student
practice" rules that allow law-clinic students to appear and argue in court.

16
Black's Law Dictionary, 6th Edition, " clinical legal studies," (St. Paul, Minn: West Publishing Co.,1990),
254


22

.Clinical legal studies exist in diverse areas such as immigration law,
environmental law, intellectual property, housing, criminal defense, criminal
prosecution, and American Indian law. Clinical education presents an
interesting intersection between the academic and professional environments.
Clinical experiences are designed to maximize the student's abilities to perform
newly acquired didactic and psychomotor skills in real patient care situations. A
college depends upon clinical education centres to provide supervised learning
experiences in which the student has the opportunity to apply the principles
learned in the classroom. A fully operational clinic is made up of five key
components:
1.The clinic is part of the law school curriculum, and it offers academic credit
for student participation in handling cases or projects as well as in a seminar
that is taught either before or during the handling of cases or projects;
2.The students work on actual cases or projects, to the extent that local rules for
those rules to permit the widest practical scope of the practice of law permit,
and with the goal to expand student practice that local conditions permit;
3.The clients of the clinic are generally those who cannot otherwise gain access
to legal representation, either due to their poverty, their social marginalization,
or the unique or complex nature of their claims;
4.Representation by students is closely supervised by an experienced attorney
admitted to practice in the relevant jurisdiction where they appear, preferably a
teacher with full or part time status in the law school;
5.Work on real cases is accompanied by a course in the law school, taught with
experiential methods such as simulation, role-plays and games, which trains
students in the skills, values and ethics of law practice.


23

TYPES OF LEGAL CLINICS
The aims and objective of each type of clinic are in principle the same. The legal clinics may
be divided into three types:
1. Simulation clinic: Students can learn from variety of simulations of what happens in
legal practice. Ex moot Court commonplace etc. Cases can be acted out in their entirety,
from the taking of initial instructions to a negotiated settlements or Court hearing. Such
sessions can be run as intensive courses or spread through all or part of the academic year in
weekly slots. Other simulations can range from negotiation exercises, client interviewing
exercises, transaction exercises etc.
2. The In-house real client clinics: In this model the clinic is based in the law school. It is
offered, monitored and controlled in law school. In this type of clinic the clients require
actual solutions to their actual problems hence it is called as real client clinic. The client may
be selected from a section of the public. The service is given in the form of advice only or
advice and assistance. In this type of Clinics, Clients are interviewed and advised orally or in
writing and also helped with the preparation of their cases. The clinic may operate as a
paralegal services or a fully-fledged solicitors practice.
3. The out-house clinic: It is a clinic that involves students in exercising legal work
outside the college or university. These types of clinics may operate on the basis of advice
giving only. Such agencies are run by trade union councils and other non-statutory bodies.
The clinic might take the form of placement also in solicitors office or barristers chambers.
Simulation clinic has several advantages than other clinics. In this type of clinic risk and
unpredictability of the real-client work are removed, the same materials are used for many
times and hence cost is substantially less than real clinic. The administration of the simulation
is very difficult. But all the clinics play active part in Clinical Legal Education and also their
objectives and aims are same.


24

HISTORY OF CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION
Clinical Legal Education includes not only the clinical courses but also practice-oriented
courses and activities included in or offered outside the curriculum. Clinical Legal Education
is more than a vehicle for the study of lawyering and the legal profession.

Clinical Legal
Education should be devised and implemented; this will give law students a deeper and more
meaningful understanding of law. Clinical Legal Education in India has its roots in both the
Legal Aid and Legal Education Reform Movements. Formal Legal Education started in 1855,
in India. Many commissions and Committees were set up for the development of Clinical
Legal Education in India. Legal Education has gone through many stages of development.
Some of these stages are The Bombay Legal Education Committee concluded in 1949,
recommended that practical courses should be made compulsory only for students who
choose to enter the profession of law and the teaching method should include seminars or
group discussions, moot court competitions etc. The 14
th
report of the Law Commission of
India recognized the importance of professional training and for a balance of both academic
and vocational training. It recommended that University training must be followed by a
professional course concentrating on practical knowledgebut it suggested that the
professional course be made compulsory only for those who chose to practice law in the
courts.
The Commissions 1958 Report concentrated on institutionalizing and improving the overall
standards of legal education. In that regard, the Report also discussed teaching methods and
suggested that seminars, discussions, monk trials, and simulation exercises should be
introduced--- in addition to lectures. Thus, although the Commissions Report didnt deal
directly with improving skills, it did so indirectly by supporting the use of teaching methods
that could be more helpful in developing various skills. A link between expressed Legal Aid
and Legal Education Reform was published in 1970s by the Expert Committee on Legal Aid
of the Ministry of Law and Justice.
After 5 years of debate over a 3-year v/s 5-year L.L.B. course, which began during a 1977
National Seminar on Legal Education at Bombay, the Bar Council of India (BCI)
unanimously agreed to introduce the new 5-year course from July 1982, open to students
after 10+2. The BCI recommended practical training in the curriculum. Reports of University
Grants Commission (UGC) also played important roles in the history of Clinical Legal

25

Education and report emphasized the role of legal education in developing law as a
hermeneutical profession, explaining that lawyers must be taught a variety of skills and
sensibilities. It outlined the objectives of reformed teaching as making students more
responsive to learning and making them demonstrate their understanding of law.
The next important step in the evolution of Clinical Legal Education began at the conference
of Chief Justice of India in 1993, which resolved the Chief Justice shall constitute a
committee to suggest appropriate steps that should be taken to assure that law graduates
acquire sufficient experience before they become entitled to practice in the courts. It found
that the general standard of law colleges in country was deteriorating and that the syllabus
should be revised to include practical subjects so that the students could get professional
training.
Bar Council of India (BCI) report 1996 on NLSIU (The National Law School of India)The
Bar Council of India issued a circular in1997 using its authority under the Advocates Act
1961 directing all universities and law schools to revise their curriculums. It included 21
compulsory courses and 2 optional courses, leaving Universities free to add more courses.
The circular also mandated the inclusion of 4 practical papers. Law schools have been
required to introduce these 4 practical papers since academic year 1998-99, which was
viewed as a big step toward introducing Clinical Legal Education formally into the
curriculum. In order to achieve the objects of the clinical programme, NLSIU offers a wide
range of opportunities in clinical programmes, compulsory as well as optional, to the
students. At present the compulsory clinical courses are(a) Client Interviewing, counseling,
And Alternate Dispute Resolution methods; (b) Litigation Clinic; (c) special Clinic integrated
with compulsory placements of two months from III year to V year of the 5 year LL.B.
course. The optional component of the scheme includes: a) Moot Court (b) Legal services
Clinics; (c) community-based Law Reforms Competition. In addition to the above, NLSIU
curriculum carries a full course of 100 marks taught outside the declared clinical courses.
This is a compulsory course on Professional Ethics and Law Office management taught with
assistance of legal practitioners. The 2
nd
UGC report of particular interest to Clinical Legal
Education was prepared by a Curriculum Development Committee, which was asked to
upgrade the syllabi of the LL.B. course. The proposed curriculum also includes several
subjects which have a potential to be taught clinically in order to offer instruction in various
values and skills required for a new lawyer. Also it introduced a clinical aspect in the LL.M.

26

program. Report of the Law Commission of India - 2002 stated that the Commission
considers that Clinical Legal Education may be made mandatory subject. Current
Assessment: One can trace the development of Clinical Legal education in India to the
efforts of a few law schools in the late 1960s. For example, faculty and students at Delhi
University established a legal service clinic in 1969 on a voluntary basis. Banaras Hindu
University was the first to introduce a clinical course, in the early 1970s. This was an optional
course offered to a limited group of 30 students with academic credit for 200 marks. The
course included courts visits, participation in a legal aid clinic in the school, and an internship
in chambers of lawyers. While each of these early efforts was significant, no steps were taken
during those years to institutionalize Clinical Legal Education.
A national movement to do so was begun with the opening of the National Law School of
India University in Bangalore, established by the Bar Council in 1987 as a model for legal
education reform. The National Law Schools curriculum includes several clinical courses,
including more recently course that cover the subjects included in the practical papers
mandated by the Bar Council of India in 1997. Over the past 10 years, seven other national
law schools have been established.


27

DEVELOPMENT OF CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION IN INDIA

Clinical Legal Education took off in the 1960s as a response to the social and political
movements of the time and the perceived irrelevance of traditional legal education.
17
It
featured service to poor clients and lay advocates interested in attacking poverty and racism.
It represented first and foremost a commitment to social justice and the law. But learning
legal skills has also been an important dimension of clinics, defined clinical education as a
lawyer-client experience under law school supervision for credit.
Clinical legal education is in the midst of an exciting period of growth and development,
prompting clinicians around the world to reflect on what clinical educations remarkable
successes over the past forty years mean for its future.
18
One important item on this agenda
that has been on the minds of law teachers in India and the United States, among other
countries, is the status of clinical legal educations traditional social justice mission.
19
There
has been a link between social justice and clinical legal education in India and the United
States since the late 1960s and early 1970s, when modern clinical legal education was first
coming into its own and law schools in both countries introduced the new clinical teaching
methodology through the establishment of legal aid clinics. Clinical education has always had
a broader goal to teach law students about what lawyers do and to understand lawyers
professional role in the legal system but it carried out that goal in its early years almost
exclusively in the context of having students provide various forms of legal aid services.
20

Over time, the legal aid dimension of clinical education has been replaced to some extent by
a more professional skills-oriented focus as the clinical movement has made important and

17
AM. BAR ASSN SECTION OF LEGAL EDUC. AND ADMISSIONS TO THE BAR, AM. BAR ASSN, LEGAL
EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AN EDUCATIONAL CONTINUUM, REPORT OF
THE TASK FORCE ON LAW SCHOOLS AND THE PROFESSION: NARROWING THE GAP 133-41 (1992).
[hereinafter MACCRATE REPORT].
18
For example, the 6th International Clinical Conference co-sponsored by UCLA and the University of London
in 2005 carried the theme Enriching Clinical Education and included among its purposes reflection on the
remarkable growth of the clinical movement worldwide. See conference brochure (on file with authors). See
also Margaret Martin Barry, Jon C. Dubin, & Peter A. Joy, Clinical Education for the Millennium: The Third
Wave, 7 CLIN. L. REV. 1, 57-60 (2000) (discussing the global aspects of clinical legal educations future).
19
Preserving and supporting a social justice focus for clinical legal education around the world is the key
mission of the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE). The GAJE website is at http://www.gaje.org.
20
See generally Frank S. Bloch &IqbalIshar, Legal Aid, Public Service and Clinical Legal Education: Future
Directions From India and the United States, 12 MICH. J. INTL L.96 (1990). See also CLINICAL LEGAL
EDUCATION: CONCEPT AND CONCERNS, A HANDBOOK ON CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION 17
(N.R. Madhava Menon ed., 1998) [hereinafter HANDBOOK ON CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION]. This
linkage existed also in earlier efforts to introduce clinical legal education in the United States, but it found
special strength at this time. See infra text accompanying notes 8-11.

28

necessary gains in the legal academy, especially in the United States.
21
Although social
justice remains at the heart of many clinical programs, the effort to obtain broad acceptance
of clinical legal education by the legal academy and the bar realized already to a substantial
degree in a number of countries around the world seems often to undercut its traditional
social justice mission.
Clinical Legal Education includes not only the clinical courses but also practice-oriented
courses and activities included in or offered outside the curriculum.
Clinical Legal Education is more than a vehicle for the study of lawyering and the legal
profession. Clinical Legal Education should be devised and implemented; this will give law
students a deeper and more meaningful understanding of law.
The subject-matter or content of Clinical Legal Education and the Clinical method of law
teaching can be separated; the subjects sought to be taught in a clinical course or program can
be presented in traditional classes, and the clinical teaching method can be utilized in courses
outside the usual clinical subject areas.
22

Clinical Legal Education in India has its roots in both the Legal Aid and Legal Education
Reform Movements.
Formal Legal Education started in 1855, in India. Many commissions and Committees were
set up for the development of Clinical Legal Education in India. Legal Education has gone
through many stages of development. Some of these stages are
The Bombay Legal Education Committee concluded in 1949, recommended that practical
courses should be made compulsory only for students who choose to enter the profession of
law and the teaching method should include seminars or group discussions, moot court
competitions etc.

21
See Stephen Wizner, Beyond Skills Training, 7 CLIN. L. REV. 327, 332 (2001) (clinical legal education has
tended to emphasize skills training and professional development over social objectives). But see Peter A. Joy,
Political Interference with Clinical Legal Education: Denying Access to Justice, 74 TULANE L. REV. 235, 268
(1999) (describing clinical educations twin goals of teaching lawyering skills and professional values and
providing legal services to low-income clients as inextricably intertwined).
22
Richard Lewis, Clinical Legal Education Revisited Professor of Law, Cardiff university, Wales, United
Kingdom, Pg. 11 [available at: http://www.law.cf.ac.uk/research/pubs/repository/212] [viewed on: 25/06/2009]


29

The 14
th
Report of the Law Commission of India recognized the importance of professional
training and for a balance of both academic and vocational training. It recommended that
University training must be followed by a professional course concentrating on practical
knowledgebut it suggested that the professional course be made compulsory only for those
who chose to practice law in the courts. The Commissions 1958 Report concentrated on
institutionalizing and improving the overall standards of legal education. In that regard, the
Report also discussed teaching methods and suggested that seminars, discussions, monk
trials, and simulation exercises should be introduced--- in addition to lectures. Thus, although
the Commissions Report didnt deal directly with improving skills, it did so indirectly by
supporting the use of teaching methods that could be more helpful in developing various
skills.
A link between expressed Legal Aid and Legal Education Reform was published in 1970s by
the Expert Committee on Legal Aid of the Ministry of Law and Justice.
After 5 years of debate over a 3-year v/s 5-year L.L.B. course, which began during a 1977
National Seminar on Legal Education at Bombay, the Bar Council of India (BCI)
unanimously agreed to introduce the new 5-year course from July 1982, open to students
after 10+2. The BCI recommended practical training in the curriculum.
Reports of University Grants Commission (UGC) also played important roles in the history
of Clinical Legal Education and report emphasized the role of legal education in developing
law as a hermeneutical profession, explaining that lawyers must be taught a variety of skills
and sensibilities. It outlined the objectives of reformed teaching as making students more
responsive to learning and making them demonstrate their understanding of law.
The next important step in the evolution of Clinical Legal Education began at the conference
of Chief Justice of India in 1993, which resolved the Chief Justice shall constitute a
committee to suggest appropriate steps that should be taken to assure that law graduates
acquire sufficient experience before they become entitled to practice in the courts. It found
that the general standard of law colleges in country was deteriorating and that the syllabus
should be revised to include practical subjects so that the students could get professional
training.
Bar Council of India (BCI) report 1996 on NLSIU (The National Law School of India)The
Bar Council of India issued a circular in1997 using its authority under the Advocates Act

30

1961 directing all universities and law schools to revise their curriculums. It included 21
compulsory courses and 2 optional courses, leaving Universities free to add more courses.
The circular also mandated the inclusion of 4 practical papers. Law schools have been
required to introduce these 4 practical papers since academic year 1998-99, which was
viewed as a big step toward introducing Clinical Legal Education formally into the
curriculum.
In order to achieve the objects of the clinical programme, NLSIU offers a wide range of
opportunities in clinical programmes, compulsory as well as optional, to the students. At
present the compulsory clinical courses are(a) Client Interviewing, counseling, And
Alternate Dispute Resolution methods; (b) Litigation Clinic; (c) special Clinic integrated with
compulsory placements of two months from III year to V year of the 5 year LL.B. course.
The optional component of the scheme includes: a) Moot Court (b) Legal services Clinics; (c)
community-based Law Reforms Competition. In addition to the above, NLSIU curriculum
carries a full course of 100 marks taught outside the declared clinical courses. This is a
compulsory course on Professional Ethics and Law Office management taught with
assistance of legal practitioners.
The 2
nd
UGC report of particular interest to Clinical Legal Education was prepared by a
Curriculum Development Committee, which was asked to upgrade the syllabi of the LL.B.
course. The proposed curriculum also includes several subjects which have a potential to be
taught clinically in order to offer instruction in various values and skills required for a new
lawyer. Also it introduced a clinical aspect in the LL.M. program.
Report of the Law Commission of India - 2002 stated that the Commission considers that
Clinical Legal Education may be made mandatory subject.
Current Assessment: One can trace the development of Clinical Legal education in India to
the efforts of a few law schools in the late 1960s. For example, faculty and students at Delhi
University established a legal service clinic in 1969 on a voluntary basis. Banaras Hindu
University was the first to introduce a clinical course, in the early 1970s. This was an optional
course offered to a limited group of 30 students with academic credit for 200 marks. The
course included courts visits, participation in a legal aid clinic in the school, and an internship
in chambers of lawyers. While each of these early efforts was significant, no steps were taken
during those years to institutionalize Clinical Legal Education. A national movement to do so

31

was begun with the opening of the National Law School of India University in Bangalore,
established by the Bar Council in 1987 as a model for legal education reform. The National
Law Schools curriculum includes several clinical courses, including more recently course
that cover the subjects included in the practical papers mandated by the Bar Council of India
in 1997. Over the past 10 years, seven other national law schools have been established.
Delhi University
In the mid 1960s, Delhi University introduced the case method of teaching followed by a
few other universities. In 1969, a legal services clinic was set up by some teachers and
students of Delhi law Faculty as a purely voluntary activity mainly to provide legal services
to inmates of prisons and custodial institutions. The programmes were developed on an ad
hoc basis and faculty supervision was marginal. The clinic acted more as an investigating and
referral agency rather than as a centre for delivery of services. Student participation was
neither consistent nor was the programme supported by the prescribed curriculum for the
LL.B. degree. There was no attempt to integrate the clinic with the curriculum excepting
perhaps some support derived through the introduction of an optional course called Law and
Poverty" in the second year which carried a clinical orientation .The clinic continued to
attract some students every year and it diversified its programmes creating a lively interest in
clinical programmes amongst an increasing number of faculty members and students.
Every year the clinic organizes a week-long orientation course informing the students of the
clinics' programmes and encouraging them to participate voluntarily. The programme
continues to be voluntary and extra-curricular even today.
Delhi Legal Aid Clinic despite being a purely extra-curricular activity did accomplish some
impressive results during the recent past. Two Lok Adalats were organized in Delhi in 1985-
86 by the clinic in collaboration with Delhi Legal Aid and Advice Board. Over 150 students
were involved in this project another set of students assisted in reaching legal services to the
victims of the Bhopal- gas-tragedy .In collaboration with the Department of Adult and
Continuing Education, students and teachers of Campus Law Centre now support legal
literacy projects amongst the students of several under-graduate colleges of Delhi University
and through those students in as many communities in the Union Territory. These activities
cannot be called clinical education as such. They are not structured that way; nor are they
included in the law curriculum. Supervision is marginal. Though they do contribute to the

32

learning experiences of a few law students in a clinical setting, they lack the academic frame-
work for self-directed education. They are more service-oriented programmes which
desperately seek academic recognition from the faculty and curricular planners.

Aligarh Muslim University
Aligarh Muslim University introduced in its third-year LL.B. class a course on "Advocacy"
which introduces students to fact investigation, legal research and writing, court procedures,
litigation strategies and issues of professional ethics. However, it does not go far in
introducing clinical methodology in terms of self -directed learning on the part of students. In
1985-86, AMU organized few legal aid camps and helped organize a Lok Adalat .A legal aid
clinic in the law school is said to be working with limited programmes.

Banaras Hindu University
On the recommendation of a faculty Committee, Banaras Hindu University Law School
introduced an optional course of Clinical Legal Education in the Vth and VIth semesters with
credit for a maximum of 200 marks .The course is open for 30 students each year who are
selected on the basis of aptitude and performance in written tests. The method of teaching is
through lectures and fieldwork. Fieldwork includes court visits, assignment in the law school
legal aid clinic, socio-legal surveying on specific problems and internship in the chamber of
lawyers. A faculty committee headed by the Dean manages the clinical course and
programmes. The Legal Aid Clinic was set up in the law school under the supervision of a
retired judge who was taken as a part-time Professor of the school on a token honorarium.
Presently there is a faculty member designated as director of the clinic. Funds for clinic
activities initially came from students' contribution, then from the National Service Scheme
of the University and later from the University itself. The University Grants Commission
provided a special grant for the clinic to expand its legal aid activities to the neighboring rural
areas. The clinic has its own bus to transport students on fieldwork.


33

Students share the required time between the court, the field and the legal aid clinics' office.
Each week the students are expected to spend at least one day in court and report at the office
of the assigned lawyer on two occasions.

Another day they are required to spend in the legal aid office doing the work assigned by the
teacher in charge. The students and teachers associated with the clinical legal programme go
to the villages around the city and undertake programmes of legal literacy, socio-legal
surveys on the implementation of welfare legislation and attempt conciliated settlement of
disputes through legal aid camps. The students keep separate diaries in which they record
their experiences, do the written assignments and get the comments of the teachers / lawyers.
The court work is jointly evaluated by the teacher and the lawyer for a maximum of 50
marks. The teacher in charge of the legal aid clinic grades the work of the students in the
clinic for a maximum of 50 marks.

It is interesting to note that clinical legal education at Banaras Law School revolves almost
entirely around the legal aid clinic and its projects. Although it continues to function with
some success it reflects the troubles from which legal aid schemes generally suffer and it
does not receive full faculty support. Further, the clinical opportunities provided are limited
to a small section of final year students.

During the nineteen seventies a report was prepared by the committee on legal education
headed by Chairman Mr. Justice Ormrod which emphasized the need to combine the
traditional legal education with instructions in skills and techniques which are essential to
enable a person to follow a learned profession. Realizing the error of largely relying upon the
apprenticeship method, ignoring the new situations which had developed over a period of
time it recommended that new ways and means should be evolved to enable use of new
facilities for educating the professional person by supplementing them with training in
professional skill and technique. It emphasized the need for a synthesis between the academic
and professional and there integration into a coherent whole noticing the isolation between
both. It recommended three stages of legal education, the academic stage, the professional

34

stage and the continuing education or training. This would enable the individual not only to
equip himself with the basic knowledge of the law but also acquaint himself with the skills
and techniques so essential to the practice of law. The idea of continuing education or
training would enable him to adapt himself to the ever changing scenario in the field of law,
so vital for career advancement.

GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT OF CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION

Clinical Legal Education gathered importance globally due to its potential to improve the
quality of legal education. As law graduates in India directly enter legal profession without
any further training or any Bar Examination Law Colleges in India share the entire
responsibility of skill training. As a result Clinical Legal Education assumes more importance
in India. The concept of practical problem solving, whether by working in a laboratory or in
the field, as an important means of developing skills has been in acknowledged since time
immemorial. However, it was in 1901, that a Russian professor, Alexander Lyublinsky, first
proposed Clinical Education in law on similar lines as in medicine.
The earliest reference on Clinical Legal Education in United States could be traced in the
year of 1917. Since that time, Clinical teaching has become an integral part of legal education
in most developed and developing countries. The global Clinical movement started taking
hold in the late 1960s; however, by that time Law Schools in the U.S. took the lead in
providing Clinical Legal Education. In most of the countries initially the primary focus of
Clinical Legal Education was on legal aid, social justice and professional responsibility.
However, this focus began to shift from client and community service to teaching skills,
particularly in U.S. due to fading of student interest in public interest work.
Thus, the concept of Clinical Legal Education has evolved and contributed a new pedagogy
in the teaching of law. It, to a large extent, also plays a crucial role in bridging the gap
between the theory and real-life practice of law, or at least the environment in which they
operate.
The dearth of clinical legal education programs in the first half of the twentieth century
reflects several conditions that law schools faced in that era.

35

First, law schools were distinguishing themselves from apprenticeships, and clinical legal
education efforts to create "model law offices" as part of law school education did not further
this market differentiation.
Second, law schools of this era were terribly under-funded and clinical legal education
courses with intensive faculty supervision were not as economical as large classes employing
the casebook Socratic method.
Third, law school teachers of this era disagreed about the value and feasibility - of teaching
lawyering skills other than legal analysis. For example, a 1944 Report of the Association of
American Law Schools (AALS) Curriculum Committee, primarily authored by Karl
Llewellyn, noted that the "current case-instruction is somehow failing to do the job of
producing reliable professional competence on the by-product side in half or more of our end
product, our graduates.
Fourth, the period from the 1920's to the 1940's was marked by ABA and AALS efforts to
create and raise standards for law schools, and none of these standards focused on
encouraging or requiring clinical legal education experiences.
These above four factors combined not only to limit the number of clinical programs but also
to stunt the growth of clinical pedagogy by limiting the number of law faculty teaching
clinical courses.
In the 1950's, there was no single vision of clinical legal education and the concept of a law
school "legal aid clinic" encompassed any "law school sponsored program for law student
work on legal aid cases."
23
A 1951 study of clinical programs identified twenty-eight clinics
run by law schools, independent legal societies, or public defender offices. At five schools, a
clinical legal education experience was mandated, but most schools offered clinics as
electives or extra-curricular activities. The work assigned to students varied among programs,
but typically included client and witness interviews, drafting pleadings, and preparation of
legal documents. Some programs gave students the opportunity to negotiate matters with
clients' creditors, and at least nine law school clinics provided opportunities for trials and
other court appearances. Most clinics attempted to have students work on cases from
beginning to end. Student supervision was cited as a "major problem," and the task of

23
Quintin Johnstone, Law School Clinics, 3 J. Legal Educ. 535, 535 (1951).

36

supervision was often delegated to experienced students, who supervised less experienced
students. At ten of the twenty-eight law schools with some form of clinical program in 1951,
students did not earn any academic credit for their work. At four schools, clinic credit was
available as part of a student's credits for a general course on legal practice. At the remaining
fourteen schools, students only earned between one and three hours of credit for clinic work.
By the end of the 1950's, thirty-five law schools reported "some form of legal aid clinic."
24
In
thirteen of these law schools, legal aid clinics were located inside the schools. In a few law
schools, all or most law students were required to do some legal aid work. In fifteen laws
schools, students were able to earn limited academic credit for clinic work. In only five law
schools, supervising faculty were able to receive teaching credit for their clinical courses.
Although the number of clinical legal education programs increased slightly from the late
1940's to the early 1950's, the late 1950's ended on a note of relative stagnation for the
nascent clinical legal education movement. There were several different models of clinical
programs, and no generally accepted definition or description. Schools defined "clinical"
programs to include both credit-earning and non-credit-earning real-life experiences for law
students either in programs located within the law school or offsite at legal aid or public
defender offices. The level of faculty involvement and supervision varied greatly, and clinical
experiences existed on the fringes of the law school curriculum. The limited growth of
clinical programs during this decade may reflect the fact that clinical instruction was only one
of several experiments under way to address perceived deficiencies of the casebook method.
Some of the other "experiments" included simulated trial practice courses, legal research and
writing courses, drafting courses, and subject matter seminars based on simulated problems.
Notwithstanding these "experiments" many of which are now standard fare in virtually all
law schools the 1960's witnessed continued complaints by law students and some law
faculty about large classes, the dominance of the casebook method, and the lack of writing
opportunities. Of all the curricular experiments since the introduction of the casebook method
in the late nineteenth century, "the concept of clinical legal education was to prove the most
important." In fact, clinical legal education is "so often called the most significant change in
how law was taught since the invention of the case method that it now sounds trite.
25
Until

24
AALS Proceedings 121, 121 (1959)
25
Philip G. Schrag& Michael Meltsner, Reflections on Clinical Legal Education 5 (1998).

37

Clinical programs entered the scene, skills training and social justice work were for all intents
and purposes, off the legal education agenda. Legal doctrines dominated the Law School
syllabi, with virtually all instruction offered through classroom courses dominated by
traditional lectures in India. Legal education was Law School, not lawyer school.
Introduction of Clinical Legal Education changed this scenario. Clinical Legal Education is
directed towards developing the perception, attitudes, skills and sense of responsibilities
which the lawyers are expected to assume when they complete their professional education.
Thus, Clinical Legal Education provides students with opportunities for professional and
intellectual development and prepares them for the practice of law, as competent, and socially
as well as professionally responsible lawyers. Clinical Legal Education took its roots in India
in the late 1960s. But Clinical Legal Education becomes integral part of curriculum only
when BCI introduced four practical papers to improve standards in legal education in late
90s. These papers are aimed at providing practical training to law students. Until these
papers were introduced in the curriculum, very little effort was made by Law Colleges to
train students in advocacy skills. Clinical Legal Education in India offers an opportunity to
make integrative transformation of legal education and at the same time make legal
profession socially relevant. To make such a transformation Clinical Legal Education should
be viewed as a method of teaching and understanding law effectively rather than a component
to offer mere skills. The complexities of modern life require lawyers to play multiple roles
such as advisors, negotiators, arbitrators, mediators, and administrators. The present day legal
profession calls for much more skills than what was required of a legal practitioner a decade
or so back. The field of lawyering is becoming highly competitive in that sense. Clinical
Legal Education justifies the existence of law school in communitys context. The faculty
will be benefited by the real life situations. This enriched experience in dealing with practical
problems of the members of the society strengthens their theoretical knowledge of law. This
in turn garners the benefits of teaching law in social context to the students. Therefore, the
ideology and pedagogy used in teaching in V.M. Salgaocar College is to make the legal
education socially relevant.
Clinical legal education emerged out of recognition that while a traditional academic
curriculum could teach legal principles, it took practical experience to know how to apply
those principles correctly and with confidence. The legal clinic concept was first discussed at
the turn of the twentieth century by two professors as a variant of the medical clinic model.
Russian professor Alexander I. Lyublinsky in 1901, quoting an article in a German journal,

38

and American professor William Rowe, in a 1917 article, each wrote about the concept of a
legal clinic. Both professors associated it with the medical professions tradition of
requiring medical students to train in functioning clinics ministering to real patients under the
supervision of experienced physicians.
This call for a clinical component to legal education was not an attempt to replicate the
apprenticeship system that already existed in many countries, in which students worked
outside the law school under the supervision of an experienced practitioner. Instead, it was a
call for a new type of education that would offer students the opportunity to experience the
realities of legal practice and the context in which laws develop, within the structured
laboratory of legal education.
Although some legal clinics were operating in the United States in the early to mid-twentieth
century, the clinical legal education concept did not take hold in U.S. law schools on a large
scale until the 1960s. Law schools in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe seriously began
to consider clinical legal education in the 1990s. One reason for the development of clinical
legal education in the 1960s was the general societal focus at that time on civil rights and an
antipoverty agenda. Law students were demanding a relevant legal education, one that
would give them the opportunity to learn how to address the unmet legal needs of poor
people in the communities in which they were studying law. The Ford Foundation saw the
value of clinical legal education and funded clinics in their initial phases through the Council
on Legal Education for Professional Responsibility (CLEPR). CLEPR grants enabled legal
clinics to flourish, and once law faculties, students, and administrators saw the virtues of
clinical legal education, law schools began to fund them from their general budgets.
Over the past three decades, law clinics in U.S. law schools have evolved from an elective
component within a handful of curricula into an integral part of legal education. Most U.S.
law schools have clinics, clinical law professors generally have some kind of long-term status
within the law school, and students earn academic credit for their participation.
Parallel to these developments, clinical law school programs have developed in South Africa,
the United Kingdom, and other Commonwealth countries. Countries in Latin America, Asia,
and Africa have also developed clinical programs designed to meet their societies dual needs
for improved legal representation of those who cannot afford to pay for legal services and for
more practically oriented legal education. For example, in South Africa in 1983, there were

39

only two university legal aid clinics; by 1992, sixteen of the twenty-one law schools had legal
aid clinics. Meanwhile, in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia, the clinical movement has
spread from several experimental programs in the mid-1990s to more than sixty law schools
in 2001.
Clinical legal education is so well entrenched in some countries that there are associations of
clinical teachers which meet on a regular basis to discuss many of the issues this chapter
raises. In the United States there is the clinical section of the Association of American Law
Schools (AALS), the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA), and the Society of
American Law Teachers (SALT). In the United Kingdom there is the Clinical Legal
Education Organization (CLEO), and in South Africa the Association of University Legal
Aid Institutions. In addition, the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE) was started in
1996 to promote socially relevant legal education by forming an internationally active
network for the exchange of information and ideas on justice education. The inaugural GAJE
international conference was held in India in December 1999, with the second conference
scheduled for December 2001 in South Africa.


40

LEGAL EDUCATION REFORM AND LAW SCHOOL-BASED LEGAL
AID CLINICS IN INDIA: LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR SOCIAL
JUSTICE-BASED CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION

During British rule, legal education in India followed the general colonial model of producing
clerks, not managers or advocates. Its primary goal was to support the existing financial
interests of England, certainly not to reform the local legal profession.
26
After independence,
legal education was expected to bring the legal system in tune with the social, economic, and
political desires of the country.
27
With 500 law schools and 40,000 law students graduating
every year,
28
law schools could play a pivotal role in promoting and providing justice,
particularly through the field of legal aid?
As noted earlier, the contemporary legal aid movement began in independent India in the
early 1960s, at about the same time as legal services programs expanded considerably in the
United States. Unlike in the United States, however, the focus of the legal aid movement in
India has not been on individual client representation but rather on providing legal aid to
indigent people at large.
29
Thus, in conjunction with the 42nd Amendment to Indian
Constitution giving free legal aid constitutional status under Article 39A Parliament
passed the Legal Services Authority Act, 1987, which aims at both providing free legal aid
and organizing lokadalats(peoples courts) to secure quick justice at low cost. More recently,
the Central Government proposed establishing Gram Nyayalayas (informal courts) to provide

26
INTERIM REPORT OF AUXILIARY COMMITTEE OF THE INDIAN STATUTORY COMMISSION ON
REVIEW OF THE GROWTH OF EDUCATION IN BRITISH INDIA, 11 (Government of India, Calcutta
1930).
27
A. S. Anand, H.L. Sarin Memorial Lecture: Legal Education in India Past, Present and Future, (1998) 3
SCC (JOUR) 1, 2.
28
N. L. Mitra, Legal Education in India, Conference of International Legal Educators,Florence, Italy (2000)
available at http://www.aals.org/2000international/english/India.htm(last visited on Aug. 20, 2006). Currently
there are 193 law schools accredited by the American Bar
Association.http://www.abanet.org/legaled/approvedlawschools/approved. html (last visited Sept. 16, 2006).
Just over 40,000 students graduated from ABA accredited law schools in 2004.
Seehttp://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/jd.html (last visited Sept. 16, 2006).
29
Bloch &Ishar, supra note 3, at 96. This has begun to change in India; for example, the Delhi Legal Services
Authority is now running twenty-eight legal aid centers and a 24-hour hotline at permanent legal services clinics
to provide legal aid to individual clients. See http://dlsa.gov.in (last visited Aug. 23, 2006).

41

justice in rural areas at a grass root level.
30
Early on, a consensus developed within the Indian
legal community that law schools should play an active role in the legal aid movement.
Although some schools were receptive, early responses to this call were less than satisfactory.
There is now a renewed effort to reform legal education that offers the legal academy, the
bench, and the bar the opportunity to realize the shared goals of meeting service needs and
education reform through social justice-based clinical legal education.

EARLY EFFORTS TO LINK LEGAL AID AND LEGAL EDUCATION
REFORM

The first major report on legal aid came in 1973 from the Expert Committee on Legal Aid of
the Ministry of Law and Justice, chaired by Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer.
31
The Expert
Committee was appointed in the Silver Jubilee year of Independence to make
recommendations for the creation and implementation of a comprehensive program of legal
aid to the weaker sections of Indian society, including persons of limited means and socially
and educationally backward classes. In stressing the need for a statutory basis for legal aid,
the Committee
said that legal aid is an integral part of the legal system not a matter of charity or confined
to the four walls of the court building. The Committees report advocated creating networks
of legal aid groups in various places such as court houses, bar associations, law schools,
community organizations, private and public agencies, and organs of local government.
Recommendations ranged from establishing an autonomous national legal aid authority, to
compulsory public service as a part of law school curricula, to giving priority to candidates
social sympathies in filling judicial and police posts. The Committees report also stressed the

30
See The Gram Nyaalayas Bill, 2005. Nyaayalays are panchayat-level (county level)courts that serve low-
population jurisdictions. They are, in effect, the lowest court of the State judiciary and operate as traditional
courts but at the grass-roots level. Lok Adalats,on the other hand, are designed to help settle disputes between
the parties that may be pending before any court, as well as matters at the pre-litigation stage. Lokadalats
arediscussed also infra at text accompanying notes 135-38.
31
See EXPERT COMMITTEE REPORT, supra note 14. Justice Krishna Iyer, known as a pioneer in protecting
prisoners constitutional rights, held various legislative and ministerial posts, was a judge of the High Court of
Kerala, and served on the Law Commission of India before being elevated to the Supreme Court of India in
1973.

42

need to modify the law school curriculum in order to focus on the needs of citizens and to
provide actual legal aid services. The Committee recommended introducing clinical legal
education in law schools with a focus on socio-economic poverty. It opined that student
exposure to real legal problems would benefit the students, the legal aid scheme, and the legal
system as a whole. It also observed that students encounters with the problems of poverty
and exploitation would change their outlook when they become lawyers, and as a result they
would not treat clients simply as facts but as living neighbors.
On the benefits of involving law schools in legal aid programs, the Committee pointed out
those law students would become an inexpensive and enthusiastic resource for providing
meaningful legal aid to Indias vast population. It recommended using law students to
provide legal aid in two stages: first, in preparing a case at the preliminary stages, including
interviewing clients and drafting documents; then, by appearing in court in petty cases,
including examining witnesses and presenting arguments.
32
Thus, the central idea of
involving the law schools was not only to provide practical skills but also to secure adequate
legal aid for the needy.
In 1977, the Committee on National Juridicare submitted its report.
33
The Juridicare
Committee was intended to revise, update, revaluate, and supplement the report of Expert
Committee, and its report concentrated more on the liability and working conditions of legal
aid programs.
34
The JuridicareCommittee recognized the value of lawyers services in
seeking remedies or asserting rights, and placed comprehensive legal aid projects as a
high priority in the States responsibility.
The main thrust of the report was the recognition that a legal services program that
reflected western attitudes and ideals cannot work successfully in India because only a
few of the problems of the poor are true legal problems. The Committee believed that
a legal aid program should aim at radical transformation of the socio-economic
structure, and concluded that the legal profession must recognize law as a potential
instrument to eradicate poverty by securing equal distribution of material resources of

32
At the time, and still today, there was no student practice rule in India. Seeinfra note 45 and accompanying
text.
33
JURIDICARE COMMITTEE REPORT, supra note 15.
34
Members of the Committee met with members of government, Bar associations, theJudiciary, and actual
beneficiaries of legal aid schemes, and examined various experimentsin legal aid at the village and municipal
levels in order to devise a comprehensive free legalservice program.

43

the country.
35
The Juridicare Committee expected law schools to play a pivotal role in
providing legal aid and urged them to establish legal aid clinics. It observed that
student participation in legal aid would not only be helpful in acquiring the skills
necessary in the legal market place, but would also provide an opportunity for the
students to develop a humanistic perspective and a social orientation. Students would
realize the social role of the law, and their participation in clinical projects would
reduce the burden of legal services institutions. For the first time, this report expressed
the need to develop clinical law teachers, to introduce subjects such as law and
poverty and law and society, and to give academic support to law school clinics. In
1981, the government of India appointed the Committee for Implementing Legal Aid
Schemes. The Committee was headed by Justice P.N. Bhagwati, then Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court of India. Like the earlier Juridicare Committee, the Committee for
Implementing Legal Aid Schemes insisted that court- or litigation-oriented legal aid
programs cannot provide social justice in India. The Committee concentrated more on
the promotion of legal literacy, the organization of legal aid camps to carry legal
services to the doorsteps of people, training of paralegals to support legal aid
programs, establishing legal aid clinics in law schools and universities, and bringing
class actions by way of public interest litigation.
36
Further, Justice Bhagwati
acknowledged the significance of the educational process in its task: Education
efforts must become a significant factor contributing to the social development of the
poor.
37

Dashed Expectations: Legal Educations Limited Response
In spite of these high expectations, only limited efforts were made to transform legal
education in India to meet the challenges of the profession. The momentum gathered by the
legal aid movement was confined at most law schools to student extracurricular activity, with
a few exceptions. Delhi University, for example, established a legal aid clinic in the late
1960s. Faculty participation was purely voluntary and no attempts were made to integrate

35
JURIDICARE COMMITTEE REPORT, supra note 15, at 25.
36
REPORT OF COMMITTEE FOR IMPLEMENTING LEGAL AID SCHEMES (1981).
37
From the Chairman, LEGAL AID NEWSLETTER 2 (Feb. 1983) cited in JagatNarain, Legal Aid
Litigational or Educational: An Indian Experiment, 28 J.I.L.I. 72, 76 (1986).

44

clinics into the curriculum.
38
Nonetheless, and in spite of the fact that the students were
offered no credit, the legal aid clinic attracted many students. Banaras Hindu University was
the first law school in India to introduce a clinical course, in the early 1970s. It was an
optional course with academic credit, offered to a limited group of thirty students in the final
LL.B. year. The course included court visits, participation in a legal aid clinic, and an
internship in chambers of lawyers. It was clear, however, that the legal aid clinic, which was
located at the school and supervised by a retired judge on a token honorarium, was at the
centre of the law schools conception of clinical legal education. Aligarh Muslim University
organized a few legal aid camps in the mid-1980s and also introduced a course on advocacy
that exposed students to such topics as factual investigation, legal research and writing, and
litigation strategies. But no steps were taken to incorporate clinical legal education into the
curriculum and participation in the legal aid camps was voluntary.
Although these efforts were encouraging at the time, no serious efforts were made by
academics or members of the legal community or by the Bar Council of India, the primary
body regulating legal education to institutionalize legal aid clinics. The main reason for this
failure was that law schools were neither physically nor professionally ready to undertake
such a huge responsibility. In order to implement law school-based legal aid programs at the
national level, the first task should have been to prepare law schools to shoulder the
responsibility.
Several factors that have marred law school education in India over the past several decades
also help explain why law schools have failed in their mission of providing legal aid. First
and foremost, most law teachers have no practical knowledge in conducting legal aid because
the Advocates Act prohibits fulltime teachers from practicing law. There is also no provision
for licensing law students to practice.
39
Moreover, no efforts have been made to provide
financial assistance to law schools in order to meet the expenses of providing legal aid and
there are no incentives such as reducing teaching hours for teachers to engage in legal aid
activities.

38
N.R. Madhava Menon CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION: CONCEPT AND CONCERNS, A HANDBOOK
ON CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION , 1998
39
See Advocates Act, 1961 29, 33 (providing that only enrolled advocates are entitled to practice law).

45

Another fundamental problem comes from the fact that for some time there has been a
general feeling that legal education in India is not meaningful or relevant.
40
In its 1958
report, the Law Commission of India painted the following bleak picture of the standards
of legal education:
The portals of our law teaching institutions manned by part-time teachers open even wider
and are accessible to any graduate of mediocre ability and indifferent merits . . . there is
hardly a pretence at teaching . . . this character is followed by law examinations . . . which
the students manage to pass by cramming short summaries published by enterprising
publishers . . . the result, a plethora of LL.B., half-baked lawyers, who do not know even the
elements of law and who are let loose upon society as drones and parasites in different parts
of the country.
41

The curriculum was neither helpful in shaping aspiring lawyers in their traditional role of
problem solver nor in their expanded roles of arbitrator, counselor, negotiator, or
administrator. The dominant teaching approach was lecture, with little or no attention paid to
underlying principles or social intricacies that resulted in shaping the particular rule. Students
had no exposure to the policy underlying the law, the function of the law, or the needs of the
nation and the expectations of the people.
42
No effort was made to understand the law in a
social context. In the words of Professor Mohammad Gouse, law students were not alive to
the dynamic role of law in the development of the country.
43

Perhaps in response to this phenomenon, there followed a prolonged neglect of legal
education during which a large number of substandard institutions and teaching shops grew
up around the country with large numbers of students. As a result, admission to law school
became disorganized and the quality of students admitted deteriorated.
44
Although there were
exceptions, most law schools failed to attract highly qualified students to the legal

40
I.P.Massey, Quest For Relevance in Legal Education, 2 SCC (JOUR) 17 (1971).
41
See THE LAW COMMISSION OF INDIA, REPORT ON REFORM OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION
523 (1958). These remarks were made by the Commission when there were only forty-three law institutes
training 20,159 students.
42
Mohammad Ghouse, Legal Education in India: Problems and Perspective, 19 J.I.L.I. 337, 337-48 (1977)
(reviewing LEGAL EDUCATION IN INDIA: PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES (S.K. Agarwala ed.,
1973)).
43
ibid
44
ibid

46

profession.
45
The situation was exacerbated by meagre salaries paid to law teachers; because
of low salaries, the teaching profession did not attract many brilliant persons to law teaching.
Further, the teaching faculty was over burdened by heavy teaching loads. Many colleges had
large numbers of part-time teachers, which resulted in overloading the full-time teachers
with additional administrative and committee duties.
46

A New Opportunity for Reform: The Ahmadi Report and the Bar Councils Mandatory
Practical Papers
This bleak experience perhaps finally taught the Indian legal community that involving law
schools in providing legal aid or other assistance to society needs careful planning and, most
importantly, that legal education needs a facelift to cope with societys expectation. Thus,
several important initiatives have been undertaken in India recently to refocus attention on
improving legal education most notably those by the University Grants Commission
(UGC), the Bar Council of India (BCI), and the Law Commission of India.
47

The UGC is the prime body in India for regulating and maintaining the standards of higher
education. In 1988, the UGC appointed a Curriculum Development Committee (CDC) with
Professor Upendra Baxi as chairman. The Baxi Committee tried to improve law school
syllabi to make them socially relevant: Human resource development in law is perceived by
the CDC not just in terms of production of efficient professionals. While this is important, it
is so only if the underlying model of professionalism is linked with struggles for social
justice, the maintenance of the rule of law and of democratic development . . . .
48
According
to a second Curriculum Development Committee, appointed in 2000, the first committees
recommendations were ambitious in nature, substantive in content (some new subjects were
introduced with an interdisciplinary approach, including Law and Poverty and Law and Rural
Development), and had a rich vision for the future. There is also a standing panel at the UGC
to guide and standardize legal education in India, presided over by the retired Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court of India. In spite of these efforts, no significant improvement in the

45
Taylor Von Mehren, Law and Legal Education in India: Some Observations, 78 HARV. L. REV. 1180, 1186
(1965).
46
Taylor Von Mehren, supra note 52
47
See LAW COMMISSION OF INDIA, 14TH REPORT (1958); EXPERT COMMITTEE REPORT,
; JURIDICARE COMMITTEE REPORT,; REPORT OF COMMITTEE FOR IMPLEMENTING LEGAL AID
SCHEMES (1981); REPORT OF CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT CENTRE (1988-90) (known popularly as
the Baxi Committee); REPORT OF JUSTICE AHMADI COMMITTEE (1994; LAW COMMISSION OF
INDIA, 184TH REPORT (2002).
48
REPORT OF THE CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT CENTRE, supra note 47

47

standards of law schools was achieved; lack of faculty expertise in the new subjects,
unavailability of textbooks, and lack of flexibility in teaching and assessing in subjects like
poverty and rural development made these socially relevant courses ineffective.
In 1994, a Committee chaired by Justice Ahmadi dealt elaborately with law school teaching
methods. The Ahmadi Committee Report recommended inclusion of the problem method,
moot courts, and mock trials in law school curricula. It also suggested supplementing the
lecture method with the case method, tutorials, and other modern techniques for imparting
legal education. Further, it recommended that all these new methods be made mandatory. The
Committee also suggested the establishment of premier law schools to improve legal
education along the lines of the National Law School of India University in Bangalore. As a
result, several additional national law schools were established all over India. Although these
national law schools tend to improve legal education, they could not affect a significant
improvement as a far larger number of students graduate from other law schools.
49

In 1997, following the Ahmadi Committees recommendations about practical training and
the filing of cases in several high courts challenging its new rule reviving a one-year training
requirement under senior advocates, the BCI issued a circular directing all universities and
law schools to revise their curricula and directed them to incorporate four Practical Papers.
50

Until these papers were introduced in the curriculum, very little effort had been made by law
schools to train students in advocacy skills. Law schools felt that training law students to
work in the legal profession was not the job of the schools but of the Bar. The Bar Councils
action was viewed as a big step toward introducing clinical legal education formally into the
curriculum and law schools have been required to introduce the four papers since academic
year 1998-99. On their face, the papers focus mainly on practical training. Paper I addresses
instruction in litigation skills, including pre-trial preparation and trial practice. Paper II takes
up various drafting skills, including pleading and conveyancing. Paper III covers professional
matters, such as ethics and bar-bench relations. The exception is Paper IV, which includes
legal aid work and other aspects of public interest lawyering. As shown later in this article,

49
The Law Commission of India also stressed the need to improve legal education in other colleges which form
99 percent of the law colleges in India: It is the desire of the Law Commission that the Bar Council of India
and the academic community must coordinate and take steps which can result in upgrading the standards of
legal education in these colleges which are spread over length and breadth of the country. A few bright-star
colleges with limited number of student-intake based on all-India selection is not the end and may not result in
an overall change in the level of legal education. LAW COMMISSION OF INDIA, 184TH REPORT, supra
note 47
50
Bar Council of India, Circular No. 4/1997.

48

the four papers can be read together more broadly to support social justice-based curriculum
reform.65 So far, however, most legal educators see them as providing only limited support
for including instruction in social justice lawyering in the new curriculum or for providing
social justice to indigent clients.
Further, the Bar Council did not assume any responsibility for implementing its new
directive. The responsibility for training law students in practical matters was simply passed
on to the law schools. Because Bar Council directives are mandatory, law schools made half
hearted attempts to fulfil their obligations despite having neither the expertise in skills
training nor the infrastructure and financial resources needed to implement these papers.
Even to the extent that some meagre resources were made available, law schools failed to
execute these directives because they were viewed as an additional burden on the faculty.
Simply put, law faculty neither had a vision for, nor properly understood, the value of these
papers.
Finally, in 2002 and after considering the Ahmadi Committee Report the Law Commission
of India took up legal education reform in its 184th Report. Noting that legal education is
fundamental to the judicial system, the Commission suggested that clinical legal education
should be made compulsory and opined that clinical legal education will be an excellent
supplement to the legal aid system.

REVIEWING CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION

Those using legal services have a direct interest in the competence and aptitude of their legal
representatives. Whether a client consults a lawyer because he or she needs a will drafting,
wants to move house, seeks compensation for an injury suffered or has been changed with a
criminal offence, the lawyer, the client may expect is likely to meet certain professional and
ethical standards. The lawyer of course may not end up lingering a case for the client.
Students who study law at university or college or perhaps through a form of apprenticeship,
have ideals in terms of their prospects as eventual practitioners.

49

The legal profession has traditionally taken a direct role in the regulation and, in part,
provision of legal education and, for a considerable period, provided the overtly vocational
courses that were a pre-requisite for admission. Employers have a vested interest too. Apart
form the need to supply the profession with competent pardoners, prospective employers will
be on the look out for staff that have the legal and transferable skills relevant to the job
market. There is also a governmental agenda. The massive expansion in the UK of the
undergraduate student market has a dramatic impact on the graduate numbers in law and in
other disciplines. Much has been heard under the present Labour government of the need for
joined-up thinking. The importance of having a legally literate society is now recognised at
governmental level and lawyers have a key role in addressing rights awareness as a precursor
to access to justice.
The wider public may also have reason to take more than a passing interest in legal
education. Apart from individual concerns as actual or potential clients of lawyers, members
of the public are presumable concerned that the legal profession, as a whole, strives for and
reaches requisite professional standards. We suggest, therefore, that the stakeholders
identified have a common interest in both the quality of legal service available and in the
education that forms the foundation for such provision. We maintain that to meet the
expectations of all interested parties newly qualified lawyers should have a sufficient grasp of
the relevant knowledge, skills and values to enable them to meet the may and varied needs of
their clients. At the point of qualification a lawyer should be able to apply these facets of
competence to produce appropriate and sustainable results for their clients in whatever
dispute or transaction that may be involved.
The learning process through which this overall position may be achieved has been described
in detail elsewhere. The key stages in this process, in ascending order of depth of learning,
are termed by bloom et al as:
Knowledge
Comprehension
Application
Analysis

50

Synthesis
Evaluation

It is our view that a (law) student is significantly disadvantaged if he or she is denied the
opportunity of applying theory to practice and of having the chance to take apart that
experience and reflect on the lessons to be learnt form that process- what happened and why,
what might have happened and what would be done differently another time. This article
looks at the future of legal education in England and Wales and further a-field in a clinical
context. We look in particular at perceptions of what legal education should aspire to from an
international perspective and at two particular examples of clinical practice that illustrate how
the aspirations identified can be achieved.

CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION AND PRACTICAL TRAINING PAPERS
In 1994 Justice Ahmadi Committee Report dealt elaborately with teaching methods.
After reviewing the recommendations made by Justice Ahmadi Committee, the Bar Council
of India(BCI) introduced a one year training rule. The Report recommended inclusion of the
problem method, moot courts, and mock trials in law college curricula. It also suggested
supplementing the lecture method with the case method, tutorials and other modern
techniques for imparting legal education.
Further it recommends all these new methods be made mandatory, it discarded the
suggestion of bar examination as a prerequisite to enrolment. However, the BCI received a
setback when this rule was challenged in the Supreme Court in V Sudheer v. Bar Council of
India 13 (1999) 3.SCC 176 the Supreme Court struck down the rule as ultra vires to the
Advocates Act and held that the Bar Council of India is not competent to pass such a rule.
Such rule can be introduced only by the legislature. It was in response to the Apex court's
decision that the Bar Council of India introduced the four practical papers to improve the
standards of legal education, namely-
1. MootCourt,PreTrial preparation and participation in trial proceedings.

51

2. Drafting, Pleading and Conveyancing.
3. Professional Ethics, Accountancy for lawyer and Bar-Bench relations.
4. Public Interest lawyers, Legal Aid and Para-Legal Aid Services. These papers are aimed at
providing practical training to law students. Until these papers were introduced in the
curriculum very little efforts was made by law colleges to train students in skills of advocacy.
Law colleges felt that training law students to work in the legal profession was not the job of
the colleges but of the Bar. With the introduction of these practical papers, it is now
mandatory for all law colleges to provide practical training. The Bar Council of India
successfully thrust its responsibility of providing skills to the young entrants by incorporating
four practical papers in LL.B. curriculum.
The Practical Papers in Reality: Their Limited Scope and Effectiveness
Although the four papers, on their face, appear adequate to provide certain basic skills tolaw
students, in reality they have not met even the limited expectations of the Bar Council
let alone the long term goal of establishing a fair, effective, and competent legal
system,accessible to all citizens. As noted earlier, most Indian law schools are not able toimpl
ement these papers due to a lack of expertise; they have neither the infrastructure nor the
personnel to implement them. Many law schools faculty have no familiarity with thenew
subjects and, due to the no-practice rule, the majority of faculty members do not havethe
necessary practical knowledge or experience. In effect, the Bar Council washed itshands of
the matter by simply passing the obligation on to law schools and the lawschools have, in
turn, relinquished their responsibility by assigning the four papers to thefaculty without
providing necessary support. The four papers are, in effect, paper tigers;most schools have
introduced these papers with only token compliance, passing all studentswithout observing
serious standards. And most unfortunate of all, everyone seems to behappy; the Bar Council
can claim it made its effort to improve legal education, law schoolscan claim they
have successfully incorporated practical training, the faculty breathe a sighof relief that the
new system does not affect them much, and the students continue
tograduate. Nonetheless, the four papers have caused considerable debate in India. Thisdebate
must now turn to the future and address seriously the legal academys ultimateambitions for
the papers and their potential to guide legal education reform.

52

C. Creating a New Reality: The Practical Papers as the Basis for a Social-justiceBased
Clinical Curriculum
Law schools are now in a position to accept responsibility for the practical training calledfor
in the four Practical Papers. What is needed to make these papers meaningful is acombined
effort from the law schools, the Bar, and the bench to implement them finallythrough a model
of social justice-based clinical legal education and to do so keeping inmind the principles
behind the fundamental values and skills set out above. The purpose of legal education is not
simply to encourage the lawyers function as champion of his or her clients cause; lawyers
are also educators, policy makers, and counselors. Lawyers can make people aware of their
legal rights and duties and they can bring public opinion to bear on law making, thus helping
make the law more responsive to national concerns. By producing such lawyers, law schools
can begin to serve Indias social justice needs.


53

CONCLUSION

It is necessary to emphasize that the purpose and scope of legal education must be to prepare
students for the practice of the profession of law. Therefore, the law and legal education
which together constitute the backbone of society should change according to the changing
needs and interests of the ever changing society. Undoubtedly clinical work will be more
expensive than class room teaching. The time frame of curriculum will be difficult to
maintain as stated by the university. There are some things which are good for clinical
experience is enabling students to understand experimentally how the law works in practice.
Hence clinic must be included as a part of curriculum. To promote clinical legal education in
India, it is critical:
for the Bar Council to amend its rules to allow law professors to practice in the course
of teaching a clinical class and encourage law schools to dedicate faculty to teaching
clinics and offer students credits for participating in clinics;
for vice-chancellors and other administrators of Indian law schools to devote
resources to hiring faculty and offering clinic classes with low student-teacher ratios;
for law professors to develop sustainable clinics and work with law school
administration to implement them;
for non-governmental organizations to collaborate with law schools to further their
work with communities and advance the social justice mission of education;
for legal services authorities to broaden the scope of legal aid by supporting law
schools to make legal aid and advice easily accessible to communities within the
premises of law schools; and
for grant making or funding agencies to fund law-school-based legal clinics to engage
with communities in strengthening democracy and improving governance for the
advancement of justice and the rule of law.


54

Bibliography
Central India Laws, Quarterly Vol. VII 1994.
R.K. Roy, Legal Education in India 21
st
Century Problems & Prospects.
Margaret M. Barry, Teaching Social Justice Lawyering: Systematically
Including Community Legal Education in Law School Clinics, 18
CLINICAL L. REV. 401 (2012).
Frank S. Bloch & M.R.K. Prasad, Institutionalizing a Social Justice
Mission for Clinical Legal Education: Cross-National Currents from
India and the United States, 13 CLINICAL L. REV. 165 (2006).
N.R. Madhava Menon, ed., A handbook on Clinical Legal education
(1998)
Ajay Pandey, Experimenting with Clinical Legal Education to Address
the Disconnect between the Larger Promise of Law and its Grassroots
Reality in India, 26 MD. J. INTL L. 135 (2011).

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