Accreditation, and the Machinery Behind the Rules
Chapter Twenty-One
Syllabus topic 1, "Objective of Legal Education"
Pages 78 to 80 of 543
In one line
Approval asks whether a college may teach law; accreditation asks how well it does, and the Rules also create the offices that are supposed to make the whole apparatus run: a Directorate of Legal Education, a Director of Legal Studies and a Legal Education Officer.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: rules 28 to 31 of the Rules of Legal Education 2008 establish a system of accreditation of Centres of Legal Education, with an Accreditation Committee under rule 29, an application procedure under rule 30 and rules for accreditation under rule 31; rules 34 to 36 create the Directorate of Legal Education, the Director of Legal Studies and the Legal Education Officer, which together are the Bar Council of India's dedicated machinery for legal education.
Why accreditation is a separate idea
Approval is binary and minimal. Either a Centre satisfies the minimum in the Rules and Schedule III, in which case it may teach, or it does not, in which case it may not. A Centre that scrapes past the minimum has the same permission as one far above it.
Accreditation is graded and comparative. It asks how good a Centre is, on criteria that go beyond the minimum, and it produces information a student can use when choosing.
The regulatory argument for it. If the only tool is a permission that must be either granted or revoked, the regulator faces the dilemma of chapter 180 every time: revoke and harm the students, or tolerate and abandon the standard. Accreditation creates a middle instrument, which is publicity rather than prohibition.
And the argument against. Accreditation only works if the grades are published, believed and used, and a grading system nobody consults is an expensive way of producing a file.
Rules 28 to 31
Rule 28 establishes the accreditation system. It is separate from approval and additional to it.
Rule 29 constitutes an Accreditation Committee, the body that carries out the exercise.
Rule 30 governs the application for accreditation. A Centre applies, in the specification the Rules require, with the fee, and the schedule the Rule points to carries the particulars.
Rule 31 carries the rules for accreditation, including the conditions and the reference to the previous academic year against which a proposal is measured.
Rule 21 fixes the fees for both inspection and accreditation, and Schedule IV carries the amounts, which the Council may amend from time to time. Chapter 210 takes rule 21 up.
The machinery: rules 34 to 36
Rule 34 creates the Directorate of Legal Education. This is the most significant of the three, because it is a standing body inside the Bar Council devoted to legal education rather than a committee that meets.
Accreditation, and the Machinery Behind the Rules
What a Directorate is for. Continuing legal education, training programmes, research, seminars, publication, and the running of the Council's own educational functions. It is the institutional answer to the 184th Report's complaint that legal education had no dedicated machinery inside a regulator whose main business is the profession.
Rule 35 creates the Director of Legal Studies, who heads the academic side of that work.
Rule 36 creates the Legal Education Officer, abbreviated in the Rules to LEO, who is the officer through whom the Council's legal education administration is carried on.
Read the three rules as an admission. A regulator that has to create a Directorate, a Director and an Officer for legal education is acknowledging that its ordinary machinery was not doing the job, which is precisely what the reports had said.
Where accreditation sits beside other systems
A law college in India can be assessed by several bodies at once. The Bar Council approves and may accredit under these Rules; the university affiliates; and higher education accreditation bodies grade institutions generally.
This is the divided jurisdiction of chapter 110 appearing again, in the specific form of duplicated assessment. The criteria are not the same, the cycles are not the same, and a Centre can be well graded by one and poorly by another.
The National Education Policy 2020's proposal of a single overarching regulator with a separate accreditation vertical is aimed at exactly this, and chapter 100 records why it has not reached law.
A worked example
Two colleges in the same city both hold approval under rule 26.
College A has the minimum: the library Schedule III requires, the full time teachers, the moot court room. It is approved and it complies.
College B has three times the library, a functioning legal aid clinic recognised by the District Legal Services Authority, a journal, a moot court team and a research centre. It is approved, and its approval says exactly the same thing as College A's.
A student choosing between them learns nothing from the approval. That is the gap accreditation exists to fill, and its usefulness depends entirely on whether the grade is published and whether anyone reads it.
Now suppose College A slips below the minimum. The regulator's choice under rule 27 is revocation, which harms College A's students. If an accreditation grade existed and were published, the slippage would have been visible to applicants two years earlier, and fewer students would have been exposed. That is the real argument for accreditation and it is worth making in an answer.
Quick revision
Approval is binary and minimal, under rules 26 and 27. Accreditation is graded and comparative, under rules 28 to 31: rule 28 the system, rule 29 the Accreditation Committee, rule 30 the application, rule 31 the rules for accreditation. Rule 21 and Schedule IV carry the fees.
Accreditation, and the Machinery Behind the Rules
The machinery: rule 34, the Directorate of Legal Education; rule 35, the Director of Legal Studies; rule 36, the Legal Education Officer.
Why the machinery exists: the 184th Report found that legal education had no dedicated body inside a regulator whose main business is the profession.
The case for accreditation: it gives the regulator an instrument between tolerating a failing college and closing one, and it gives applicants information before they commit.
The case against: a grade nobody publishes or consults is a file rather than a reform.
Test yourself
1. Distinguish approval from accreditation. Approval decides whether a Centre may teach law at all and is binary, granted against the minimum in the Rules and Schedule III. Accreditation grades a Centre that already holds approval, against higher and comparative criteria, and produces information rather than permission.
2. Name the three offices rules 34 to 36 create and say what they are for. The Directorate of Legal Education, a standing body inside the Bar Council for continuing legal education, training, research and publication; the Director of Legal Studies, who heads its academic work; and the Legal Education Officer, through whom the Council's legal education administration is carried on.
3. Give the regulatory argument for having accreditation as well as approval. Because approval offers only permission or prohibition, so a regulator faced with a slipping college must either revoke, which harms enrolled students, or tolerate, which abandons the standard. Accreditation supplies a middle instrument that works by publicity rather than prohibition, and warns applicants before they commit.
4. What does the creation of a Directorate of Legal Education tell you about the Bar Council's ordinary machinery? That it was not adequate to the task. A regulator whose main business is the profession had to create a dedicated Directorate, a Director and an Officer for legal education, which is an acknowledgement of the complaint the Law Commission had made.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.