Why a Country Needs Legal Education: The Lawyer and the Judge

Objective two: staffing the Bench

Producing judges and judicial officers is the second objective, and India does it through the same degree. There is no separate training for judges. There is no judicial college a person enters instead of a law college. Every judicial officer, at every level, first took a law degree, and most first practised.

The two routes. Judicial officers at the entry level are recruited by competitive examination from law graduates, and the higher judiciary is drawn largely from the Bar. Both routes pass through the law degree, so the quality of the judiciary at any moment is the quality of legal education a generation earlier.

This is why regulation of legal education is treated as a public interest and not a consumer one. A badly taught engineer builds a bad bridge and the bridge is one bridge. A badly taught lawyer who becomes a judge decides thousands of cases, and the harm is not confined to the people who chose the college.

The Supreme Court has said so in terms. In State of Maharashtra v. Manubhai Pragaji Vashi, (1995) 5 SCC 730, the Court held that the State's obligation under Article 39A to provide free legal aid requires an adequate number of properly equipped law colleges, because without legal education for a good number of students the public will be deprived of legal assistance. The facts and the full holding are at chapter 40.

The audit at the end of the chain

The two objectives above are promises about the college. The All India Bar Examination is the test of whether the college kept them.

In Bar Council of India v. Bonnie Foi Law College, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 130, decided on 10 February 2023, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court upheld the Bar Council of India's power to conduct the All India Bar Examination and left it to the Council to decide whether it is held before or after enrolment. The Court set aside V. Sudeer v. Bar Council of India, (1999) 3 SCC 176, which had struck down the Council's pre-enrolment training rules as beyond its powers, holding that it is no longer good law, and made the decision prospective.

Why it matters here. Until 2010 the only test of an Indian law graduate was the examination set by the college's own university. The Bar Examination is the first external audit, and it changes the answer to the question this chapter asks: the objective of producing competent advocates is now checked by somebody other than the producer.

A worked example

Anushka enrols at a law college in Thane which has approval from the Bar Council of India and affiliation to an MU recognised university. She completes the three year course, passes, and applies to the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa for enrolment.

The Bar Council checks the chain. Is her university one whose degrees are recognised under section 24(1)(c)(iii)? Was the course of study the prescribed one? Is she disqualified under section 24A? Has she paid the fee section 24(1)(f) fixes, and nothing more, which is what Gaurav Kumar v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 558, decided on 30 July 2024, holds may be demanded?

She is enrolled, and then sits the All India Bar Examination. Her right to practise depends on it. If a large proportion of graduates from one college fail, that is evidence about the college and not only about them, and it is evidence the regulator did not previously have.

Ten years later she applies for judicial service. The eligibility is a law degree and the prescribed practice. The same education is doing its second job.

What this objective does NOT mean

It does not mean legal education exists only for those who will practise. Chapter 30 shows how small a fraction that is. The Bar and the Bench are the first objectives, not the whole of them.

It does not mean the college is responsible for competence alone. Entry is a joint product of the college, the regulator and the graduate, which is why Bonnie Foi placed a check at the end of the chain rather than only at the beginning.

And it does not mean a degree is a licence. Section 24 makes the degree a condition of enrolment, and enrolment plus the Bar Examination, not the degree, is what confers the right to practise.

Limits and criticism

The 184th Report of the Law Commission, December 2002, found the first objective unmet at scale, and its diagnosis was regulatory rather than pedagogic: nobody had defined what standards of legal education means, so nobody could say when a college had failed to meet them.

The second objective carries a criticism of its own. If the Bench is drawn from the Bar and the Bar from the colleges, then a college that teaches only theory produces judges who have never drafted, examined a witness or advised a client. The clinical papers of Schedule II exist for this reason, and chapter 520 is about why they have not worked.

Quick revision

Section 24(1)(c)(iii) of the Advocates Act 1961 requires a law degree from a university recognised by the Bar Council of India. Section 24A lists disqualifications for enrolment. Section 24(1)(f) fixes the enrolment fee.

Objective one, the Bar: the mechanism is a condition of entry, and the Bar Council of India controls both which universities count and what the course must contain.

Objective two, the Bench: India trains no judges separately, so the judiciary of tomorrow is the legal education of today. Manubhai Pragaji Vashi, (1995) 5 SCC 730, ties the supply of law colleges to the Article 39A duty.

Bonnie Foi Law College, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 130 (10 February 2023, Constitution Bench) upheld the All India Bar Examination and held V. Sudeer, (1999) 3 SCC 176 to be no longer good law. Gaurav Kumar, 2024 INSC 558 (30 July 2024) held that nothing beyond section 24(1)(f) may be charged at enrolment.

Test yourself

1. Name the provision that makes a law degree a condition of enrolment, and state what it requires. Section 24(1)(c)(iii) of the Advocates Act 1961: a degree in law obtained after a course of study in law from a university in India recognised for the purposes of the Act by the Bar Council of India.

2. Why is the quality of legal education treated as a public and not a private concern? Because the graduate becomes an advocate and later a judge, so the consequences of poor teaching fall on litigants who never chose the college. Manubhai Pragaji Vashi puts the point constitutionally, tying the supply of law colleges to the State's Article 39A duty to provide legal aid.

3. What did the Constitution Bench decide in Bonnie Foi Law College, and what did it do to V. Sudeer? It upheld the Bar Council of India's power to conduct the All India Bar Examination, left the timing to the Council, and held that V. Sudeer, which had struck down the Council's pre-enrolment training rules, is not good law, setting it aside prospectively.

4. A candidate writes that a law degree gives the right to practise. Correct them. The degree is only a condition of enrolment under section 24. The right to practise follows enrolment on a State roll and, since 2010, passing the All India Bar Examination.