Legal Education in India Before Independence
Chapter Eight
Syllabus topic 1, "Objective of Legal Education"
Pages 30 to 33 of 543
In one line
Indian legal education began as an add-on: the universities founded in the middle of the nineteenth century took law in as one subject among many, taught in the evening by practising lawyers to students who were mostly doing something else, and that shape survived almost unchanged for a century.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: formal legal education in India began with the establishment of the Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1857, which introduced law as a subject of university study; before that, legal training was apprenticeship in the courts of the East India Company and the Supreme Courts at the Presidency towns; the courses that resulted were short, part-time, taught largely by practitioners and examined by written papers alone, and it is that inherited shape which every reform effort since independence has been trying to change.
Why this history is examinable
Because the criticisms of Indian legal education are criticisms of an inheritance, not of a design. Nobody sat down and decided that law should be taught in two years, in the evening, by lecture, to a class of two hundred. It arrived that way and stayed.
Because the reform reports are unintelligible without it. The 14th Report of 1958 and the 184th of 2002 both open with the history, because their proposals are proposals to undo particular features of it.
And because a question on the development of legal education in India is a standard one, and it wants a narrative rather than a list.
Before the universities
Legal work in the Presidency towns was done by people trained on the job. The Supreme Courts established at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay in the eighteenth century applied English law and admitted barristers and attorneys trained in England, while in the Company's own courts the pleaders were trained by practice rather than by study.
Two consequences followed and both persist as arguments. First, the profession was split between those trained abroad in a formal system and those trained locally by apprenticeship. Second, the law being applied was substantially English, so the teaching that eventually developed took English legal categories as its natural frame.
Legal instruction of a sort existed before 1857. Classes in law were held at colleges in the Presidency towns in the decades before, but they were not degree courses and did not qualify anyone for anything.
1857 and the university law course
The Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were established in 1857, and law was among the subjects they examined. That is the conventional starting point for formal legal education in India and it should be stated with the year.
Note carefully what these universities were. They were examining bodies on the London model. They did not teach; affiliated colleges taught, and the university set and marked the examination. The consequences for law were direct: the degree meant a pass in a written paper, and what happened in a classroom was nobody's concern.
Legal Education in India Before Independence
The course was short and part-time. The law degree was typically two years, taught outside working hours, and the student body was substantially people already in employment or already reading for another degree.
The teachers were practitioners. Lawyers and judges taught in the evening after a day's work. This had one real merit, that the teaching was connected to practice, and several defects: no time for preparation, no research, no continuity, and nothing that could be called a law faculty.
The method was the lecture, and the assessment was the annual essay paper. Both are the direct ancestors of the practices topics 2 and 3 of this syllabus ask about.
What that produced
A degree that certified memory. A student who attended little, read a guide and wrote well could pass, and many did. The examination could not test whether a graduate could draft, advise or appear.
A profession trained twice. Because the degree did not train, real training happened afterwards, informally, in a senior's chambers. That informal apprenticeship became the actual professional education, and its quality depended entirely on the senior.
A subject with no scholarship. Where the teachers are part-time practitioners and the university is an examining board, nobody is paid to write, and Indian legal writing before independence was thin outside a small number of commentaries.
And a rapid multiplication of colleges. Because law needs no laboratory, no workshop and very little space, a law college is the cheapest professional college to open. That fact drives the whole regulatory apparatus of chapters 130 to 210.
What the reform argument inherited
Three features to name in an answer. The course was short and part-time; the teaching was by practitioners with no full time faculty; and the assessment was a single written examination at the end.
Each has a modern counterpart. The three year and five year courses of chapter 90 answer the first. The full time faculty requirements of the Rules of Legal Education answer the second. The semester system, internal assessment and clinical assessment of chapters 340 to 450 answer the third.
And one feature that is not a defect. Teaching by practitioners connected the classroom to the courts, and the Rules of Legal Education 2008 deliberately reintroduce it: Schedule II requires the clinical papers to be taught in association with practising lawyers and retired judges, which is chapter 500.
A worked example
Imagine a student in Bombay in 1930 reading for the LL.B. He works in an office by day. Three evenings a week he attends lectures given by an advocate who has come from court. He reads a printed guide to the syllabus. At the end of two years he writes papers on jurisprudence, contract, crimes and procedure.
Legal Education in India Before Independence
He passes and is enrolled. He has never drafted a plaint, never seen a client, never examined a witness and never read a full judgment; he has read summaries of judgments in a guide.
He joins a senior's chambers, and there he learns law. If the senior is good he becomes a good lawyer in five years. If the senior is careless he learns bad habits, and nothing in the system corrects them.
Now compare a student at an MU affiliated college today. The course is longer and the syllabus much wider. But if the lectures are the only method, the guide is still the reading, and the four clinical papers are examined as written theory, the 1930 shape has survived inside a modern timetable. That is precisely the complaint every reform report makes, and it is why this history is set as a topic rather than as background.
Quick revision
Before 1857: training by apprenticeship; barristers and attorneys trained in England, pleaders trained by practice; the law applied was substantially English.
1857: Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras established; law becomes a university subject. The universities were examining bodies, not teaching bodies.
The inherited shape: short, part-time course; practitioner teachers with no full time faculty; lecture method; a single written examination.
What it produced: a degree certifying memory, real training pushed into the chambers, almost no legal scholarship, and a very cheap professional college to open.
The one merit worth keeping: the connection to practice, which Schedule II of the Rules of Legal Education 2008 deliberately restores through the clinical papers.
Test yourself
1. Give the conventional starting point of formal legal education in India, with the year, and say why the universities founded then had the effect they did. 1857, with the establishment of the Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. They were examining bodies rather than teaching bodies, so the degree certified a pass in a written paper and what happened in the classroom was outside the university's concern.
2. Name the three inherited features that later reform reports attack, and the modern answer to each. A short part-time course, answered by the three year and five year full time courses; practitioner teaching with no full time faculty, answered by the faculty and infrastructure requirements of the Rules of Legal Education; and a single terminal written examination, answered by the semester system, internal assessment and clinical assessment.
Legal Education in India Before Independence
3. Why is a law college the cheapest professional college to open, and why does that matter for regulation? Because it needs no laboratory or workshop and very little equipment. It matters because the number of colleges can grow far faster than the supply of qualified teachers, which is what the inspection, approval and accreditation machinery exists to control.
4. Identify one feature of the pre-independence model that the current rules deliberately keep. Teaching by practitioners. Schedule II of the Rules of Legal Education 2008 requires the clinical papers to be taught in association with practising lawyers and, for drafting, preferably with the assistance of practising lawyers or retired judges.
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.